Dante's Divine Comedy
by Richard Bachman
Summary: UPDATED chapter 14, Based on the episode Chosen. After his sacrifice, Spike finds himself trapped inside a terrifying illusionary world that looks like 19th century London. Is he being punished and sent to hell or is he actually offered a second chance?
1. Going Under part one

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Angel went to hell. Buffy died and ascended into heaven.   
  
So where exactly does that leave Spike?  
  
The mood has somewhat changed after my first update on this story, and I'm heading for something (much) grimmer now, with a plot that edges on horror. I hope that you will all forgive me for not introducing " the girl" in this fanfic. Even in the beginning I had planned to write something to explain how Spike got out of the Kingdom of the Dead and arrived back safely in the Land of the Living. This is not a love story, I'm afraid, but a journal kept by a survivor of a shipwreck, drifting on the waves of the Great Atlantic in desperate search of a safe shore, but finding horrible sea-monsters threaten to swallow him on the way.   
  
Love, R   
  
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Part I; Going Under  
  
1.  
  
The light was bright, and searing. It lit up the inside of the immense cave, basking it in a radiant glow that was like that of the sun. Dark, ugly shadows fled from that abundance of light, scuttling away with inhuman speed like ditch-dwelling rodents, trying to find shelter in the scarce pockets of darkness that were left. The white flood caught up with each one of them, and collided with the bodies of these grotesque imitations of men, scorching them into clouds of scattering ashes. The spreading light eliminated hundreds, thousands of them. The armies of monsters that had thrown themselves up the cliff to spread bloodshed and death were forced back and fell into the vast pit, tumbling down while their bodies burned and were reduced into dust before even they had the chance to hit the earth.  
  
And all this destruction, all this incredible force, it all came from the amulet. Or rather, it used to come from the shiny little gadget bouncing around my neck, but now, I believed, it came from inside of me. I felt it: a hot, blazing presence, a scorching fire in the middle of my soul. The glow that radiated from my body had blown up the bloody roof and I could catch through the many holes in the floors gaping above my head a slice of azure sky. I was bathing in light. Never had my eyes seen things so clearly in my entire existence. Never in my ignorance and mind-baffling doggedness, had I known and understood so much.  
  
A hand grabbed hold of mine. The touch was cold like frost to my burning skin. I lowered my eyes and saw her standing before me. God, she is absolutely beautiful. She is everything that is good in this world. Her heart is the size of all the bloody oceans. She is the glowing centre of existence, a pure bright light shining in darkness, and I loved her. I loved her so much. Our fingers gently entwined into each other, our touch igniting flames, ice meeting fire. As she looked into my eyes, nothing mattered any longer. Gone were my fears, doubts, all of my bloody nightmares. All around us, the entire world was sucked into hell. The earth split, walls crumbled and stone roofs collapsed in thunderous roars, but we stayed together in the middle of all that chaos, unyielding and totally oblivious of it all.  
  
"I love you." She whispered.  
  
"No, you don't." I said. Knowing, that her words were not true. "But thanks for saying it."  
  
The earth trembled underneath our feet and more parts of the stone roof came soaring down. "Now go." I shouted. I felt how the fire of the destructive light that was contained inside my body starting to turn on me, and had to grind my teeth to withstand the pain.  
  
She let go and left. My burning hand clutched nothing but empty space, and without her cool touch to ease it, the skin scorched black like paper thrown onto a hearth. The pain of it was driving me mad. The force that first had mercifully restrained itself in some sort of way, sparing its bearer from being simply destroyed by its devastating power, was rapidly losing control of itself. It spread over my body, following the tracts of arteries and veins, appearing in radiant white paths running across my skin. My blood was boiling. I was burning up from the inside.  
  
Not now. I thought, and I pulled my cracked lips into a painful, but cocky grin. Not yet. I want to see this. I want to know how it ends.  
  
But there was no bargaining here. The force of good had used me well and now it was time to discard itself from the useless vessel that had carried it like a secret weapon deep into the liar of the enemy. The city had fallen and this Trojan horse was no longer needed.  
  
The rays of light burst through, shredding my skin like layers of old paint. I laughed like a madman through the dreadful agony till the flames scorched my lungs and my throat and I could no longer utter a single sound. I saw with my own eyes how a massive part of the cave collapsed, leaving a huge opening through which blinding daylight flooded into the darkness. And then the flames reached my chin, my mouth, my nose, and finally my eyes. It consumed all the flesh, leaving behind only the blackened bones and the skull to fall to the earth, where they exploded into clouds of dust.  
  
NEXT PART --  
  
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	2. Going Under part two

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2.  
  


  
"Don't - it burns. Stop it!"  
  
"Will?"  
  
"I'm burning! I'm burning all up!"  
  
"Will!!!"  
  
My eyes flew open, startled by the touch of fingertips on my eyelids. Shreds of the nasty nightmare made me all fearful and I cringed into a ball.  
  
"Bloody hell Will! You were dreaming again! Screaming the whole doss-house together!"  
  
"I think he crapped himself in bed. Dear Lord, the smell of it!"  
  
Mocking laughter rose from the other side of the room. I grunted and tossed around on my straw mattress, then dragged myself up reluctantly. The dark and dank room swayed. Watery morning light pierced through the dirty window, and outside, the tower of the St. Giles rose out of the yellow fog like the peak of a faraway mountain.  
  
"At least he said he was burning. I got my belly full of his mad screams about drowning and being all wet and so on. It's fine when a girl says it to you, but it's totally different thing when one of your mates starts talking like that."  
  
Another screech of haughty laughter. Bradbury I reckon. Bloody Oxbridge accent, even when the old goat was merely breathing. It sent shockwaves of pain into the intoxicated mush that used to be my brains.  
  
"Are you done yet?" I asked Higgins, who was sitting on his cot with his back to the wall. He was busy plucking dirt underneath his toenails with his fingers, dropping the disgusting crusts on his bed. The grand potbelly and the large, fleshy arms and legs were not getting in each other 


	3. Going Under part three

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3.

  
  
It turned out that Pete getting us early out in the streets was actually something good, because we managed to get hold of two kidney-pies, which was one more than we were used to. Higgins insisted on getting a whole one for himself.  
  
"If I don't get enough to eat, I'm not going to be of any use to you mates. I got to have a good bottom in my stomach to keep my hands from shaking."  
  
Pete, Bradbury and I shared the pie that was left. We brought tea from Mr Collin's at the corner of Mile End Road and drank hot water in tiny sips while we cupped our hands around the battered mugs to collect some precious warmth.  
  
"So." Bradbury said, bopping our communal teabag into his mug with a raised pink before passing it over to Pete. "What's the plan for today?"  
  
"We're not going to work in the streets. That's for sure. The weather is no good." I opted. "There won't be any decent folk strolling along upper Thames or trying to show off their new ostrich feathered hats at Mayfair, unless they're very much planning on getting a fashionable disease like the bloody consumption."  
  
"No crowds, no cover." Higgins muttered, spraying us under wet pie-crumps.  
  
"No crowds, no representatives of the law either. If you look at it that way, it could be easy picking for us." Bradbury said.  
  
"Hear hear." I said, clutching my blue fingers around my cup of boiled water. Tracking the way of the teabag impatiently. "Professor Clever-clogs has spoken, let's all rise and give praise to his bloody genius."  
  
Pete was done making his tea and handed it over to Higgins, who dropped the thing in his mug, and started squeezing it with his greasy fingers to get the last bit of flavour out. That bloody selfish git.  
  
"I was only saying. Besides what did you have in mind then? Most places indoors are rather inaccessible for the likes of us. We would either need an invitation to get in, or we have to pay a fee."  
  
"How much do we have left?" Higgins asked.  
  
"Ehm." I put my hand in the only pocket of my coat that didn't have a gaping hole in it, and gathered up all the coins inside. "Two shillings, and four cents." I said, counting them on a flat hand. "Perhaps we shouldn't have brought that second pie for fatso here."  
  
Higgins snorted his disgust and continued wringing out the last drops of brown liquid for his tea.  
  
"Gentlemen, or for as long as that could be considered the correct way of addressing you people, the term ape-men springs more to mind, actually."  
  
"What you're rambling about, doc?"  
  
I rolled my eyes at Higgins. "He was insulting us you big nit! And are you finally finished with that tea-bag yet, or do you need to chew a while on it first?"  
  
Higgins reluctantly handed over the dripping bag. I dipped it into my cup, and squashed it against the rim, but all I got out of it was a faint yellow drizzle that even failed to stain the water any darker.  
  
"It wouldn't be considered overly-dramatic when I start panicking a little bit now, would it?" Bradbury commented. "Tomorrow is the eight of the month and two shillings and four cents is not going to be enough to pay the ten shillings that we owe our landlord."  
  
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time he threw us out to sleep in the ditch." I muttered, picking up the useless thing and tossing it away. "Only this time, there is actually a chance that we might really freeze to death like he said we would."  
  
"Only one day left to collect enough money for the crazy old fart. Now where do we start?" Bradbury frowned, looking at me for a shiny bright scheme, but apparently, the lights were all out up there and nothing came. I was left to sulk back at him with my brows all furrowed.  
  
"Oh come on, Will! Help us a hand!"  
  
"Sorry mate. Must be the lack of a good cuppa tea that has my mind going useless." I said, sipping from my boiled water.  
  
"The National Gallery!" Pete suddenly shouted, a twinkle in his large brown eyes. "Why don't we go to the National Gallery?"  
  
The three of us were too stunned to react at first. I mean, even Higgins immediately thought that it was a dog's cobblers of an idea.  
  
"Pete." I tried not to be too harsh on the young fella. I quite liked the seventeen-year-old little scoundrel. He might not be the sharpest knife that you would find in your mum's cutlery drawer, but at least he was bloody decent. "You have to pay a fee to get into the National Gallery. I wager that for each one of us we already have to pay three shillings."  
  
Pete shook his head. "No, we don't! Believe me, we can get in for free today!"  
  
"Have you been slipping booze in your cuppa without telling us?!" Higgins asked. "And without sharing any with us?!" he added, sounding sincerely troubled by that.  
  
"I'm not drunk or anything. I'm just saying that the gallery is opening its door to the public today. I remember reading it on posters." He turned away and looked at the walls behind us, scanning the many layers of plastered announcements for an example. "There. You see?" He stripped off the lose corner of a welted pamphlet and showed us a wet, yellow poster with large, dark print underneath. It read:  
  
Introduction to the great Italian collection:  
London National Gallery  
Open to public  
Friday the seventh and  
Saturday the eight  
  
April 1881  
  
Which meant pretty much the same as: Access free of payment, at least when properly dressed.  
  
"It's not a bad idea, right?" Pete asked, glancing around in the group for support. "We could go there and try to earn this month's rent for Mr Collins."  
  
"Right, a social gathering of London's fat-cats and hot-nobs, with plenty a crowd to mingle in, which is possibly a safe-haven from the cruel hands of law as well." Mused Bradbury.  
  
"Pete, you're bloody brilliant!" I uttered, and I couldn't keep myself from ruffling my hand through the lad's hair.  
  
"It's nothing really." Pete blushed. Looking down he scuffled with his feet.  
  
Bradbury tilted his glasses while a broad grin spread over his face. "Gentlemen! We urgently need to pay a visit to our dear lady Doll, methinks!"

NEXT PART 

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	4. Going Under part four

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4.  
  
Doll was the only daughter of old Mrs Jones who used the run the little pawnshop in Mile End before she got infected with consumption and needed to stay in bed all day, confining her to the damp cellar underneath the shop where they both lived. Doll was a young and dishy thing. She looked frail though, and had limps, which were oddly long but graceful. When you looked into her eyes you would not see the young passionate light of a sixteen-year-old child, but the joyless gaze of a tired, grown woman, not far from her mum's age.  
  
"What are you gents looking for?" She asked hopefully. They didn't get many customers these days. The inexperienced girl was not capable to run the business properly. Quite often, the people who came into the shop to pawn something found out that they could easily bully her into a good bargain instead that it was the other way around. The place was stocked with worthless junk; broken watches, discarded furniture and clothes that had been worn to rags. All of it pawned in exchange of good money that could have been put in good use by her and her ill mother.  
  
"We want to buy some clothes; trousers, jackets, some shirts. They have to be decent." I explained.  
  
"For both of you?" She asked, a hopeful twinkle in her eyes.  
  
"Ehm, well. It depends. How far can we get with -" I glanced over my shoulders at Bradbury, who stuck a single finger in the air.  
  
"One." I nodded, feeling embarrassed already. "One shilling."  
  
The hopeful twinkle quickly ebbed away. "One shilling." She repeated softly to herself. She couldn't even get the fat arse of their fancy family doctor out of the comfy chair for one bloody shilling, let alone pay for a full consult. "I don't know, sir. I think you can get a very proper shirt for that, or a good pair of trousers. But not a jacket."  
  
"Well, that depends, my dear lady Doll." Bradbury walked up to the counter and stared right into the her eyes. "For all I know you haven't got anything in this musty old shop of yours that's actually worth a bloody penny, and is asking one shilling for a smelly torn shirt an easy way to con us out of our last savings."  
  
The girl's eyes grew wide. "No such thing, sir! Honestly, I would never cheat on a single soul! There are some clothes that my mother keeps apart in the backroom. They are of good quality and in excellent condition. If you gentlemen are interested, I can show them to you."  
  
She led us into a small dark room stocked with clothing, and on each empty spot there was a piece of clobber hanging from a rusty nail-head protruding from the walls. She showed me a brown tweed jacket, which was a perfect fit and looked fairly new except for some patchwork around the elbows. Bradbury picked out an almost perfectly white shirt, with a pair of matching trousers to match with it. 

"How do I look?" I asked, fiddling clumsily with my sleeve cuffs till Doll was so kind to fold them over for me.  
  
Bradbury observed me from head to toe.  
  
"Like a true gentleman, if not I'll be damned! William, I didn't think you got it in you, but you look absolutely dandy in that outfit!"  
  
You see, sir!" Doll smiled, happily. "Like I said, we won't overprice any of our merchandise. That shirt you wear is made of good cloth and has not a single stain on it. We wash them out and patch up the holes if there are any." She lowered her eyes, crimson flushing the paleness of her cheeks. "And if I may add, sir. It does look quite flattering on you."  
  
"Really, I figured I must look like a bloody nancy." I said, but my cheeks getting warmer nonetheless. "I don 


	5. Going Under part five

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5.

  
  
"This!" Hissed Bradbury, and he pinned his finger on my chest. "THIS is all your fault!"  
  
"No Bradbury, this is what you get for two shillings these days. One smelly old tweed jacked, patched, washed and ironed."  
  
"It could have been two jackets, you imbecile! With two pairs of trousers and two silk shirts!"  
  
"Ah, come one! That shirt you picked was made for bloody closet queens, all bundles of lace at the collar and trollop ribbons around the cuffs. Even Oscar Wilde didn't dare to look like that in public."  
  
Bradbury was not impressed. He stalked up and down the pavement in front of the now barred and locked pawnshop of Mrs Jones like one of those sad feline predators in the London Zoo stalking inside their tiny cages. Suddenly, he halted and bolted with his fists on the door.  
  
"Open up Doll!" He bellowed. "This is NOT how we made the bargain, and you know it!"  
  
"Tell her we gonna burn down her bloody shop if she's not coming out!" Yelled Higgins, loud enough for a couple old folks strolling by to raise their brows and walk around us in a wide circle. "With her and that ugly old hag of a mother in it if we must! Bet they both will burn like real witches! That will show her!"  
  
I grabbed Higgins by his greasy shirt and slammed him with his back against the wall.  
  
"There will be no burning or showing of any kind." I sneered. "And I would keep your sewage hole shut if I were you."  
  
He gulped, his fat sausage fingers bald into puffy fists. Higgins was furious at me. I could see the murderous rage showing on his face that was now swollen and red like a big fat strawberry. He couldn't do much about it though, since he also knew that I was stronger, that for every pound of fat he carried around over his flesh, I had an ounce of lean muscle covering my bones. He was like one of those sad French soufflés: large and perhaps impressive to look at, but all weak and squishy in the middle.  
  
"Besides, Higgs." I said, a cocky grin starting over my lips. "You wouldn't have gotten anything out of this. There was nothing in that shop that even came close to your size."  
  
"Don't you dare to bully him!" Bradbury shouted, angrily pacing up to us. "You were the one who tricked us, you charlatan! - Oh, it's all right Brad!" He said, doing a really poor imitation of my Cockney talk. "I'll pay Doll the shilling and make sure she packs everything up. You go outside and look for the others. - And then, just when you walk out of that bleedin store with only this lousy jacket, that little bitch slammed the door shut and bloody well even barred it!"  
  
"Yeah, that was pretty brilliant, wasn't it?" I grinned.  
  
Bradbury's face turned into an unknown shade of dark crimson.  
  
"It isn't that bad, fellas! We could still go to the opening! At least two of us could. I have a quite proper looking jacket back at the doss-house that we could patch up a bit." Pete opted, trying to put out the fire.  
  
"YOU WORTHLESS TURD!"  
  
"We might go borrow a clean shirt from the neighbours, and those pants Will 


	6. Going Under part six

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6.  
  
A black suit with cream shirt stepped forward after the red curtains were drawn aside from the hidden masterpiece. He loosened his border, barked clear his throat, and then started speaking to the large crowd that had gathered around him in a loud and well-practised voice.  
  
"Sinners, my dear ladies and fine gentlemen. Sinners and saints. That's what this work is all about."  
  
A wrinkled apricot dress shifted between the others, moving herself to the front of the crowd while uttering a string of Pardons and Escusez mois. When she passed by, her nauseatingly strong perfume totally levelled my sense of smell and stung in my bloody eyes.  
  
"This exquisite painting by Domenico di Michelino, dated from the fifteenth century, is unique, not because of the quality of the work or the name of the artist, which are considered both to be relatively poor academically. No, it's intriguing and stands out by it's own because of what it actually depictures. It has an highly unusual theme for a work of medieval art."  
  
A purple suit came standing next to me, craning his neck to see the masterpiece, but catching very little of it. While his attention was somewhere else, I caught eye of his wallet, made of reptile skin if I was not mistaken, possibly snake or gator, sticking half way out of his back pockets. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw Pete standing no more but a couple of heads behind me, looking severely bored.  
  
"These men and women I see here, dear Lord, are they pictured naked?" The apricot dress asked, lifting her thick glasses up to her nose while she leaned forward to pierce at the left corner of the painting. "And oh my! Are these nude children?"  
  
The black suit shifted uncomfortably. Half of the crowd, about two third of them bourgeois middle class and one third pompous upper class, uttered a gasp of indignation and scuttled closer to get a better look at all this artistic perversity. Purple suit moved along as eagerly as the rest and before I knew it, his wallet was entirely out of reach.  
  
"Oh Bollocks!" I whispered beneath my breath, and forcing my own way through the crowd, went after it.  
  
"Ladies! Gentlemen! Don't push each other! Stay behind the velvet cords, please!" Uttered the black suit.  
  
"I think I can see the little boys' willies." Muttered the apricot dress. "It's painted quite clumsily though, they look more like plump little sausages to me."  
  
"It's pornography, that's what it is! How could the National Gallery even consider purchasing such filth!" Shouted a wasp waist flower gown.  
  
"Those bloody Italians! Totally obsessed they are with the sinful flesh! Everything has to be stripped and painted nude!" Exclaimed a dark green tweed jacket.  
  
"How dare they call this rubbish "Dante's Divine Comedy", connecting the work of our Lord to this iniquity! It's pure blasphemy, I say!" Yelled yet another tweed jacket, grey this time.  
  
"Well, I rather like it! There's a really nice use of colour, I believe."  
  
A good number of gowns and suits turned their heads and stared at the black tailed-coat, observing him with some suspicion.  
  
"What?" The tailed-coat uttered, glancing back at the others. "Can't a man speak up his own mind? Even on the subject of art which is more a matter of taste than anything else?"  
  
A murmur rose up from the crowd, providing an opportunity to the black suit to pick up his little speech. He was now sweating like a pig and had to wipe off the perspiration from his brows using the loosened cuffs.  
  
"Ladies! Gentlemen! Please! Don't come any further! If you all would calm down and allow me to explain the painting!"  
  
I finally caught up with the purple suit and his Pick-me! snake skin wallet. We were standing two heads away from the painting and I could observe it somewhat better now; there was a figure standing in the middle, dressed in a poofy pink gown, wearing a wreath of bay leaves and holding up an opened book toward the observer's eyes. He was in front of what looked like a seven stories high wedding cake, with a pile of rocks at his right and a man-sized dollhouse at his left. Above his head, there was a layered sky with a panel of colours varying from depressing grey to a shade of foul black. I wandered where exactly the nakedness was that wrinkled old apricot dress was getting all excited about, and I wondered if that Italian bloke wasn't nipping from the good ol' absinth when he was painting all this bollocks, even more than I questioned his sanity.  
  
"The painting, ladies and gentlemen." Continued the black suit. Although he wore black, stains, which were blacker still, were blooming underneath his armpits. "It's a remarkable painting, really." He smiled, sheepishly.  
  
"Are you going to explain to us why there are all these naughty naked people in the painting?" The old apricot dress asked.  
  
"Oh for crying out-loud! Could someone please make that obsessed old bat shut up about it already!" Black suit yelled, red spots budding over his neck.  
  
My eyes were fixed. Carefully, I moved my tensed body so I was able to bend my arm. Purple suit was standing right in front, and had both his hands in his pockets as he was slightly hopping on his toes from time to time. I shot a casual glance over my shoulder, acting like I was looking around accusingly for who was poking in my back or stepping on my shoes, my brows fitted together into a irritated frown. Meanwhile, my hand slipped through the narrow pockets of space between the tightly packed bodies like a boa slivering forward through a swamp. It snatched its prey, and then retreated immediately.  
  
"This painting pictures scenes from Dante's masterpiece; "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri from Florence", the first work of literature bearing significance in western civilization after the Romans and the Greeks. It is a poem, describing a journey of the writer himself into the other world, visiting hell, purgatory and paradise. The man standing in the middle of the painting is Dante, showing to us his poetic work of fiction, the "Divine Comedy" opened on the first page."  
  
I slipped the wallet into my own pocket, with the back of my hand and the shadows shielding it from public's eyesight. I remained on my spot for a while, trying my best to look as dull and bored as the rest of the group.  
  
"He gestures to his right. At that side of the panel, we see the gates of Hell, where the damned are led by a company of demons into the Inferno to suffer and burn for their sins, never to be released again."  
  
Encouraged by the wanker's enthusiastic ramblings, I blinked and narrowed my eyes as I peered at the brown mass of paint that I had mistaken for a pile of shapeless rocks. There were definitely tiny figures there, I could distinguish them now. Men and women, all starkers, caught in utter desperation. Their hands were raised, their mouths wailing regret and promises of penance, their overly large googly eyes cast up to heaven. All around them, pot-bellied demons with comically large animal heads were herding them toward a big fire-breathing monster. They had a jolly-good time poking their long pitchforks into the docile human life-stock, cheerfully adding something memorable to their misery.  
  
"To his left is his beloved city of Florence, on which he would never set foot again after his banishment. Behind the poet, we see Purgatory, which he described as an immensely high mountain, rising up from the vast abyss that is hell. On top of this mountain lies the Garden of Eden. In Dante's vision, the lost garden is a place where we find the earth it self. It is the earthly paradise from which the souls ascend into heaven proper."  
  
The dark green tweed jacket scraped his throat thoroughly, intending to draw enough attention before dropping the question.  
  
"Excuse me, my dear fellow, but I don't see any scenes of paradise in this picture. The only thing that seems remotely heavenly in this miserable painting is on top of that mountain, but that's only the earthly paradise, you say? The garden of Adam and Eve?"  
  
"Yes, indeed good sir. There is no clear depicturing of heaven by the artist. It's merely suggested to exist by the context from which it arises. You see, the artist knows Dante's work, and there heaven is described to be located beyond the outermost of the nine concentric spheres, the celestial layers, as you may know, that carry the planets and the stars around the earth. That is what Michelino painted, and nothing more. His own stern belief in its existence and the unyielding faith of his fifteenth century public allowed him to do so. In their opinion, although they were both not to be seen, it doesn't mean that heaven and God doesn't exist inside the painting."  
  
Slowly, I worked myself toward the border of the crowd where Pete was waiting. The boy was tapping impatiently on the marble floor with a spit polished but still shabby looking shoe.  
  
"The sinners however, in both purgatory and those who are on their way to hell, lack both virtue and knowledge, to carry such faith. They all are doomed, even the ones spending fullness of time on the slopes of the mountain, exposed to continues abuse and horrible hardship in order to cleanse their souls of their sins. They are all unable to free themselves to find redemption. Dante entered the gate and travelled deep into hell, where he found Ulysses' ghost, no more but a shadow of the man he was before, and the hero told him the story of his last voyage and death. This Ulysses had never returned to Ithaca. He set sail to the west instead after his last adventure described by Homer, on a quest to find a place where there was virtue and knowledge, disillusioned as he was by the dishonesty of mankind. After a terrible voyage in which he lost all of his remaining crew and his dearest of friends, his battered ship stranded at the foot of a high mountain. He had found Purgatory, for that was indeed the place where the condemned tried to gain both virtue and knowledge."  
  
"What took you so bloody long?" Whispered Pete, as I shook his hand like he was an old acquaintance who I had just spotted, slipping the purse over to him as our hands met.  
  
"Never mind that." I said on a faked friendly tone, pumping his hand with an enthusiastic smile plastered over my face. "Go take care of business as usual." I whispered.  
  
"Right, it was nice talking to ya."  
  
He slipped the lout into his pockets, and wandered off after giving me a slight nod. He was going to empty mister purple suit's purse from anything valuable, and dispose the rest of it behind a row of musty curtains or drop it into an antique vase. Rule number two from the Pickpocket-handbook for dummies; never allowed yourself to be caught with the red-hot evidence right in your hands. This is however complete rubbish if you considered rule number one, which was to never allow yourself to be caught at all.  
  
The black tailed-coat, who had so boldly admitted his fondness of the ugly painting in public, stared at me from a few feet away. When I glanced back at him, he quickly took his gaze somewhere else. Call me paranoid if you fancy, but that bloke definitely got my senses tingling. He folded his finger behind his ear as pretending to be listening, or maybe he really was listening. It was hard to tell, and I imagined he was some sort of a copper, watching me from the corners of his eyes, and every tiny gesture of his fingers ought to be a secret sign to his fellow colleagues that the subject under his surveillance was very likely a criminal.  
  
"Oh bugger this!" I muttered to myself. "It's just a crazy old hag with a bollard-eye. Keep your bloody knickers straight, you big poof!"  
  
Pete reappeared within sight, wearing a gigantic smile that ran from ear to ear.  
  
"I don't bloody believe this! There was almost two pounds in that purse! These people are nuts to carry around so much money!" He said, hardly able to restrain his voice. 

"SSsssst!!" Panic spurred up my spine when tailed-coat cast a glance into our direction, and this time, when I gazed back at him with an apolitical grin, he didn't look the other way. 

"Ops, sorry Will." Pete continued, hardly adjusting his volume. " But bloody hell! Two pounds! That makes ten pounds fifty in total! Bloody marvellous! I've never hold on to so much money in my entire life!"  
  
The black suit was done talking and was occupied with answering the very peculiar, often moronic questions coming from the crowd.  
  
"So the poor fellow never got home to his wife, then?" Asked the green tweed jacket.  
  
"Beg you pardon, sir, but I believe that although Dante might have been fallen in love with Florence, he never was married to it."  
  
"Not him, you ignorant green potato! I meant Ulysses!"  
  
"You did? Oh, I'm awfully sorry! Ulysses of course, how silly of me! Nope, No, Dante's Ulysses was sent to hell." The black suit replied firmly.  
  
"I don't understand this." A pink dress with yellow ribbons opted. "Why would God punish a hero like Ulysses by sending him into damnation? The man knows no other crime but his desire to become righteous and to find wisdom. How could this possibly be considered a sin by our Lord?"  
  
The purple suit had placed a cigar in his mouth and was searching his pockets for matches. For some unknown reason (I mean come on! No-one in his right mind ever sticks a box full of matches in his back pockets, everybody knows it will get squashed) his hands fluttered from his jacket to his trousers to his rear end, and then, after he found out that there was actually something more important missing, he dropped his jaw so wide that his soddin smoke fell out of his mouth.  
  
"My wallet! He yelled. "I've been robbed! My wallet is missing!"  
  
Pete looked up at the purple suit, together with all the others in the crowd, his eyes growing wide. From the other side of the hall, the black tailed-coat stopped observing Pete and me like we were some endangered bird species in the wild and came hurrying toward us, his brows knitted into one firm V.  
  
"All right, lad." I said, grabbing the youngster by his arm and pulling him to the fringe of the masses. "It's time to dash. This cultural trip is over."  
  
Purple suit's lament had caused a good deal of panic and people were shouting their indignation and were generally moving about like tightly packed chickens in a den, utterly chaotic and without any sense of direction or purpose.  
  
"Please! Ladies and gentlemen! Figuratively speaking that is." The black suit was finally getting tired of this group of annoying buggers. "Please! People, calm down! Calm down! Oh calm down, you bunch of mindless barbarians!"  
  
"Those two!" and as Pete and I fought ourselves a way through the stream of heavy cigars puffing, lavender scented, and fans waving flannel, lace and silk suits and dresses, the tailed-coat ran after us as much as the limited free space allowed him to while he pointed an angry finger at us. "That one with the auburn tweed jacket and the patched elbows! And that scabby looking young boy! Hold them! They're bloody pickpockets!"  
  
His shouts were barely audible above the high pitched wail coming from the black suit when one of the guests stepped on a lady's long petticoat and caused her to stumble and knock an overly priced but bloody ugly charcoal drawing right off the wall.  
  
"NO!!! Not the da Vinci!" The black suit cried. He looked like one of those sinners out of the painting with his desperate expression of horror and all the plucks of hair that he was tearing right off his scalp.  
  
"Not the bloody da Vinci!!"  
  
Pete and I escaped out of the main exhibition hall, and kept running through the corridors till we found ourselves safely back outside under the broad grey sky of Trafalgar Square.

NEXT PART 

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	7. Going Under part seven

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7.  
  
"We are rich! Filthy, snobby, disgustingly rich!"  
  
Bradbury tilted his glasses and stuck his chin in the air, a thick grin the size of a slice of melon straining his lips. "A toast to smutty richness, my friends! And a cheer for William, our purse- snatching champion of the National Gallery! The King of the Finger-smiths! Hip-Hip-Hip!"  
  
"HOORAY!" Boomed out of the vocal cords of the three men.  
  
"Bloody well done, Will!" Added Pete.  
  
I ruffled the boy's hair till he looked like a recently awakened porcupine. "Don't be daft! You've done your part as well as I did mine."  
  
"Are we going to toast or what?" Asked Higgins between a burp and hiccup.  
  
We were back in the doss-house, living the life of the young and dangerous with the small coal-burner lit to a blaze in our tiny wood beamed room, consuming masses of alcohol and giving way to loud farts as our splendid dinner of cooked goose and roasted potatoes started their rampant way through our digestive systems.  
  
"We better watch out or we're going to blow off the soddin roof." I said, taking another swig of Sancerre, clean out of the bottle. The perplexed patron in Fleet Street who sold us the wine advised us to serve it chilled, so I had bound all six bottles in Higgins's pillowcase and had hung them out of the window. The cold took care of the rest. After we popped bottle number three, I agreed that the snobby wanker was right. It did taste better when it was chilled, like there was a little cherub pissing on my soddin tongue.  
  
"Look Will, I know I've been a bit harsh with you this morning." Bradbury slurred. His glasses were sliding half way down his red-red nose and his fuming breath could kill a professional drunk from ten feet away, but there was sincerity in his voice that I couldn't ignore. " I had just wanted to tell you, warn you as I may, what this dark and glum world is all about." He placed a hand on my shoulder before slumping over. "I didn't want to upset you like that, I really didn't! You're the only decent bloke I've ever met in this God forsaken place and I absolutely love you, my boy! I love you! You're a treasure!"  
  
"Thanks." I smiled, sheepishly. God, I knew Bradbury was a bit of a faggot, but it was even worse when he's drunk. I hoped he wasn't trying to get into my knickers. The notion alone of shagging Brad's overripe craggy physic makes one tremble with fear.  
  
"So it's all forgiven, then? All of my old foolishness and hurtful words crossed out of our mutual memories?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess we're fine. Besides, never had much of a proper working memory, I'm afraid."  
  
He clammed my cheeks between two sweaty fingers, making my lips stick out like a bloody blowfish.  
  
"Oh you! You fine youth with such a wonderful, fine soul! I could just kiss you!"  
  
"You know Brad, you old dog, maybe you should lay down the booze for a while. You're getting pissed."  
  
"Nonsense William! I barely started! This old chap is still fit as a fiddle!"  
  
"Right-o."  
  
Bradbury heaved and barfed all over my shoes.

NEXT PART 

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	8. Going Under part eight

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8.  
  


  
By the time Higgins' rear end started conducting a concert of Bach for our amusement, and Bradbury was hopping on the cots, stripped completely starkers except for his pair of glasses and his socks, I've decided that I really needed a fag in the clear evening air, and fled the room with a slightly queasy feeling in the stomach.  
  
So even I had my bloody limits.  
  
The frost had not settled in yet, and the cobble stone streets were wet and slippery. I made my way through the stinking alleys with the dimmed lights and the drunk yells, where at every corner there was a whore looking for business. I stepped over puddles of rainwater and horse piss, ducked beneath wash-lines heavy with rags, and almost stumbled over a beggar who was fighting a skinny dog over a rotten meat-bone. I searched my pocket and tossed him a crown, letting the mutt get away with the bone.  
  
"Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you!" Blurted the old man, and grinned a grateful, one-toothed grin.  
  
"No thanks mate." After a giving it a second of thought, I added cheerily. "Complements from my dear friend Bradbury here!"  
  
I wandered off with an inward chuckle while I imagined Old Brad's face if he knew I had just wasted another five shillings on some poor old homeless hag. I doubted that he would still keep calling me Darling Dashing Will or Willie o-Dearie after that, which was all the better, actually. Come to think of it, perhaps I should tell the crazy old goat.  
  
I reached Cable Street, which marked the end of the miserable maze of poverty that was the Whitechapel district, and crossed the road with its busy traffic of handcarts, carriages and wagons down into The Highway, where a long strip of promenade was looking out over the bend of the Thames. I strolled along for while, with my hands deep my in pockets, and my collar tugged up to my chin, clouds fuming out of my mouth and nostrils with every breath. The sun was setting, darkening the high sky. In the west, a shimmering glow dipping into the glittering water was all that could be seen. The London docks with its high cranes, boat-houses and gigantic steamers, and the mighty Tower Bridge at my right, the entire south side of the city across the river, they were no more but a series of shades in a yellow smoulder, impressions of the real things lying hidden inside the pervasive fog. Always that soddin fog.  
  
I leaned over the banister and lit myself a fag, blowing rings of smoke to join the haze. From out of the low mist that drifted over the dark water like a ghost, rose a ship, old and battered, blackened by the fumes that pumped out of the two massive chimneys. My lazy eyes followed it as the big ugly thing made its way to the west, its bow splitting water while it rear left a trail of froth and flocks of bickering seagulls in its wake.  
  
It was simply impossible, I thought. The whole idea could easily be considered outrageous, un-bloody-believable and completely nutters to the point of getting toenails-chewing paranoid. I knew that the professor was right. There was a sun up there during the day, and it would actually show itself sporadically. Even in bloody London with its numerous coal-fumes spitting chimneys of fancy residents, slumps and factories alike, I knew the bloody thing should be there and that it should shine from time to time. It's just that I couldn't remember that I 


	9. Falling Forever part 1

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Part II; Falling forever  
  
  
  
  
  
1.  
  
  
  
The nightmare about that mountain and the girl. The one that Pete, carried away by his juvenile enthusiasm, so daftly tried to make me remember, was the one that visited me that very last night that I spent with my friends, right before everything went to hell.   
  
  
  
I had that dream before. In fact, I think it occurred to me at least once or twice in a week that I was trashing awake, sweating and screaming to that girl whose name I could never remember, till Pete, shaking my shoulders or slapping me across the face, would save me from it. That particular nightmare was like a boogieman that lurked around after the lights were out, jumping up from underneath the bed from time to time to give a good scare, then disappearing back into the shadows. By the time it popped its ugly head around again a couple of nights later, I had already forgotten most of it to get me to realise that it was merely a dream, and so the bloody thing was able to keep haunting me for months.   
  
  
  
It always started in the same way. In that dream, I would find myself stranded at a strange shore, with a black sea from which the horizon parted into an alien sky, its dark waves whispering behind me. There were no stars, no clouds drifting above my head, no sun or moon that could tell me the difference between night and day. The sky looked dead, and had an eerie red glow as if something large and jealous had just murdered it with a sharp knife. The sand between my feet was black like the strange sea, like it had been scorched. The beach itself was littered with large slates of stone, the crooked landmarks reminding me of neglected, jagged headstones at a cemetery. Land-inward, a cliff followed the short beach-line, rising up behind a wood of withered branches, dead shrubs and hollow, crooked trees. There were steps carved into the rock face, winding around like a big snake as it went up. I would raise my head and look at it, seeing nothing but this massive mount of stone and dirt. The notion would occur to me then, that it was not a cliff, but a mountain. So broad was its base that I could not see the borders of land touch the sea at both sides, and so high was its peak that it just disappeared into the blood-red sky without becoming much narrower in perimeter. I was stranded at the foot of a monstrous mountain. My hands and legs would start to shake; then a feeling like something heavy was dragging on to them, followed by the sound of rattling metal. If I looked (and I always did, I always looked), I would see that I was fettered by chains. Voices could then be heard, all around me; a chorus of moans and wails rising up from the waves. The beach was swarmed by men and women, washed ashore like frail sacks of suffering flesh, crawling out of the water and onto the black-scorched land, their frighteningly skinny chests heaving madly.   
  
  
  
  
  
They would crawl first. Then, after struggling up and trying a couple of swaying steps, they would start to walk, their rusty chains clattering between their legs. They all looked horrible, like bodies that have been smashed on the wheel. They had scarred skin, dark bruises, burn marks, blisters and slashes everywhere. Most of them were bald, with plucks of hair falling over their scalps in wet cobwebs. All of them had whip-marks running across their backs, so severely had they been beaten that the flogging had cut through on some spots of the skin like it was butter. I saw a man whose stooped back was one grotesque gaping wound filled with puss, and the pink dented frame of his spine just stuck right through the tissue like a row of teeth through bleeding gums. I saw another man, whose face was completely burnt away, leaving only a grinning skull covered with bits of shredded red skin, his eyes dangling out of the sockets like large boiled eggs tied to pieces of bungee wire. I looked away, absolutely horrified, and my lucky eyes came across a woman. Her belly was slashed open to up to her chest, and she dragged a green and brown mass of intestines behind her. When she came closer, I saw that something moved between the stinking coils of her entrails; a bloody foetus, dangling from his mum's umbilical cord like a caterpillar from a rotten leaf; it's tiny, not yet fully done body wriggling inside a thin membrane sack.   
  
  
  
I screamed, spun around, tried to run away. My legs became entangled with the chains and I fell, face down into the ash coloured earth. Darkness loomed over me, and a spilt hoof came down, followed by a black horse leg that sunk deep into the sand. My heart pounded madly as I looked up, and saw, who was studying me with a red glow in his bulging eyes. The horseman mounted on the skeleton frame of the black steed was nothing more but a stack of bones himself, held together by yellow threads of tendons and dried shreds of muscles, like those funny wax jobs they made out of hanged criminals in order to teach the med students human anatomy. The horseman grinned his lipless grin, the large brown monk's habit he wore covered most of him and the cowl drawn low over his skull cast a dark shadow that made the white of his rounded eyeballs appear even more frightening. The only skin he still had was on his boots and was made out of wrinkled, flesh coloured leather. His bony fingers encased the handle of a rawhide bullwhip, and he tapped with it on his spurs, making them give a cheery tinkle with each tap.   
  
  
  
I crawled from underneath the mouth-foaming horse, my eyes so wide of fear that I imagined them popping out of my sockets like the ones on that poor bloke I've just seen. The horseman raised his bullwhip and struck it down with a WHUSH. And then, for a spilt second, my mind went entirely blank, and all I could think of was that hot burning gash that cut through me like a butcher's knife. Wriggling with my belly over the sand, I tried to crawl away from him. A second blow exploded on my backside, and the pain caused my spine to arch into a spastic crook.   
  
  
  
I felt like I was splitting in half.   
  
  
  
The horseman dug his spurs deep into the flanks of his nightmare horse. It screamed in rage and reared, its front hooves rose so high that it blotted out the red glow in the sky. I thought it was about to crush my head. I wanted to scream, but my throat was like a narrow tube, wheezing air, and all I could say was Oh no, oh no, and I felt a warm trickle of fluid running down my spine, right where the whip had hit me. Oh no, I muttered, Not here, please, not here, and just as I turned myself around, the horse hooves came down, not on my skull to make it burst like an overripe pumpkin, but next to my head on the scorched ground, making it shudder and causing the surface to crack.  
  
  
  
I started blubbing. Rambling. Took my breaths with animal-like pants. The horseman looked down at me with this devilish glow still smouldering inside his dead eye-sockets.   
  
"Please, not here, not here." I muttered, my mind was quickly backing away, leaving me mad with fear. I didn't want it to end here; I didn't want to die in this horrible horrible place, alone and surrounded by these terrifying phantoms.   
  
  
  
"Not here. Please, help me, God help me."   
  
  
  
The horseman turned his head to the mountain, raised his skeleton hand and pointed toward the group of wretched beings, struggling up the stone staircase. Like a mindless zombie, I crawled back at my feet, and started walking toward the foot of the mountain. I was quickly swept up by the stream of bodies, a cramped mass of tortured souls and terrifying sounds. They pushed me forward, stepped on my feet, poked me from the side, pressing their shrivelled wounds and festering ulcers against my bare skin. The air was hot and thick with the smell of decay, of rotting flesh squirming with belching maggots. The group halted at the end of the shoreline. They dropped on their knees like sinners in a church, and started digging frantically, removing vast amount of black earth, sweeping it up like dogs busy burying bones, and they dug out large chunks of stone; as they were black, with tiny glittering particles melted into it, they looked like shattered parts of the night's sky to me.   
  
  
  
"Must repair it." I heard an old man mumble. His eyes were white-rimmed and sticky saliva trickling down the corners of his lax mouth. He was talking to nobody else but to himself, as if he was totally alone among all the others. "Must fix it." He rambled on. "It's the only way out. The only way."  
  
  
  
I searched around and also dug out a piece of glitter-stone. My body and my mind worked autonomic, fully detached from what was left of my old self. Then I followed the others, and carried my precious cargo up the rocky stairs, scrambling on my hands and knees because the steps were too narrow and I was afraid that I would fall. People did fall over the edge, those who were too weak or too injured to actually move or just had the bad luck to be pushed too near to the side. They plummeted down the cliff into the graveyard beneath, their heavy bodies snapping the twigs and branches right off the trees while the trunks snapped their spines and necks like used matches. As we went up higher and higher, the falls became more frightening. A man with one leg amputated to the knee, let out a savage scream as he tumbled over the edge. In a desperate attempt to save himself, he dragged a young boy with him, and we heard a sickly cracking noise as they hit the sharp rocks below. They rolled down like bags filled with broken things and disappeared into the darkness. We all watched, but we saw nothing, felt nothing but fear and the fierce wanting not to become like them. I cast my eyes on the steps, keeping them there. I fought for every small space between the coiling, wriggling mass. I stepped on others, kicked them back, pushed them aaway. Always keeping myself close to the stone surface of the cliff, my right hand tracking it with a barmy fanatism. The air became hotter as we climbed up higher, till every panting breath I took was burning inside my lungs and left my throat parched like a desert. The sky was a blazing furnace; a frightening glow of purple and orange, trembling like a soddin moorage. The stone that I carried in my hands had increased in weight with every step I took. It became heavier and heavier, till it was like dragging a bloody anvil up the hill. I forced myself to keep moving, drenched as I was in sweat and so exhausted that I was hardly able to stand up any longer. A woman pushed me away, and my hand lost contact with the stone wall. A man stepped on my leg and kicked me in the chest. I fell, and slid down several steps, scratching my stomach open over the rough stone surface. My glitter-stone rolled out of my hands. The others moved on, unyielding, like a marching row of insects, ignoring my cries as they trampled me under their feet. A rain of boots and blows, and I was thrust aside till the ground suddenly disappeared beneath my body. I screamed and grabbed hold to an arm, any protruding object, my fingers frenetically clutching onto it while above me I heard the shrill shriek of a hysterical woman.   
  
  
  
"Don't drop me! Don't drop me!" I spewed out the words like a lunatic, my heart hammering so loud that I was convinced that it was tearing my entire rib-case apart. The woman's eyes grew maniacal. Her mouth was a gaping, screaming hole. Lightening threw shattered light over her hollow-cheeked face. It was followed by roaring of thunder, making the mountain shudder. She clawed at my hand, slashing her nails into it like an angry cat.  
  
  
  
"NO!!" I shouted. "PLEASE! DON'T LET ME FALL! DON'T LET ME FALL!"  
  
  
  
I tried to hold on to her, but my fingers started to bleed and became all slippery. My hand glided down the woman's arm, who tried to pull away and kept screeching and crying. Then I just held on to her hand. Then, only her fingers.   
  
I fell back into the abyss, horror wrenching a scream from my throat. The darkness swallowed me up like a hungry maul.   
  
  
  
I woke up close to the shore. The sea surged in my ears. The bleeding sky stretched wide before my eyes. A wave pulled over me, and filled my mouth and nose with salty water till I choked and wretched. I tried to move, a hellish pain shot through my body; a hot, blazing agony that left me coiled up in the drowned sand. My limps were completely bloodened; large black bruises bloomed like malignant mushrooms over my thighs, spreading down to my kneecaps and up to my groin. A splintered piece of bone shimmered in the red glow, sticking out of my elbow like a dead tree in a field. Whimpering, I tossed over my injured body that now seemed to consist only of torn flesh and fractured bones, and started to crawl toward dry land. I was not alone. All around me came the cries of misery and suffering, and then they emerged out of the hurling waters like some gruesome swarm of deformed fish, pulling themselves forward, their arms and legs twisted and bend in frightening angles, some of them merely left with fraying stomps, the colour of cooked liver. Others, their eyes empty and drained of any other feelings but despair, had opened their mouths to produce one long, endless howl. I moved with them. I had become one of them now. Finally, we reached the dark line of wet sand on the beach. My useless body slithered onto the muddy surface, and collapsed there.   
  
  
  
A split hoof sunk into the sand next to me.  
  
  
  
"Ah, poor Spike. I feel sorry for you."  
  
  
  
Sobbing and fearing the worst, I stared up at the figure mounted on the horse. A girl, dressed completely in white, from her leather boots and jodhpurs to her long sleeved shirt. Her hair was golden; rays of a happy morning sunshine. Her doll-like, greenish blue eyed, pout-lipped face upset me; it stirred my memory like a bolt of electricity frying a frog's leg.   
  
  
  
The horse reared and she reined savagely to get his legs back on the ground. She slapped on the animal's flanks with her riding whip, drawing beads of blood on the dark fur.   
  
  
  
"You look really awful." She said, wrinkling her nose as if she smelled something nasty. "All wet and boneless. Like some icky flaccid squid-thing."   
  
  
  
She poked with her whip in my swollen leg, making me cry out in pain. My helpless twisting and cringing seemed to be really amusing, and she chuckled manically.   
  
"She left, didn't she?" She asked, smiling sweetly at me. "That bitch! But, hate to say I told you so! You shouldn't have trusted her, Spike. You should have fought at my side. I would have treated you well. At least I wouldn't have left you to die in that cave."  
  
  
  
The whip's thin end moved up, caressing the inner parts of my thighs, drawing supple circles near my groin. Shivering, not of cold or fear but of something else, I sucked in tiny breaths in a futile effort to remain calm.   
  
  
  
"You're not afraid of me now, are you?" She purred, her voice coated in honey as her riding whip brushed my limp cock that was nudged against my thigh like a cold wounded dog. She jumped off the saddle, her breath quickening, her round breasts played peek-a-boo inside the crease of her low-buttoned shirt. The corners of her pink lips curled into a grin as she hunkered down beside me.   
  
  
  
"No." I croaked. "Please, no." Fearing her, absolutely disgusted by her, but strangely wanting her too.   
  
  
  
She cupped my genitals with her small hand. Her touch was soft and warm, and an unwilling moan escaped from my perched lips.   
  
  
  
"There." She whispered, bending down and breathing over the moist curly hairs covering my groin.   
  
  
  
"There. If you're so afraid of me."  
  
  
  
Her hand brushed over the head, teased it with her fingertips. Swallowing, I felt an alluring heat pulse from her body, and as she leaned over my chest, her long cascade of blond hair grazed over my skin like the soft tickle of feathers. Who was this strange girl? What did she want from me? And how on earth could my Neanderthal brain keep thinking about things like what she could do to me with her warm mouth and hot hands while I was lying there, sprawled out like a deformed, legless chicken?   
  
  
  
"Why don't you try to get away?" She breathed.  
  
  
  
I moved slightly, mindlessly, as if she had just spoken out a command that I had to follow. Immediately, agony exploded up my spine.   
  
  
  
"Can't." I said, hoarsely, and then, since I was only left with half a brain of wit, added. "I think - my - my legs, maybe they are broken."   
  
  
  
"Ah, my poor boy, poor Spike." She cooed like a mum to her baby, and I wondering why she kept calling me Sticks or Spike or what ever it was. Maybe she had a dog named like that. "I bet it is all misery and pain, isn't? It must be unbearable for you to know what is done to you, not once, but only God knows how many times! Just, over and over again."   
  
  
  
She closed her eyes, her lips curling into a content smile as if the words could trigger images in her head that gave her some perverse sort of satisfaction.   
  
  
  
"And then to be completely helpless, being too weak to stop all this. This merciless destruction of body, heart and spirit."   
  
  
  
Her eyes flew open, and I stared not in the sea colored rings of her pupils but into the empty orange glow of two white-less and irises-less eyes. The orange shifted and flickered, like flames behind the isinglass portholes of a hot stove. Watching her like this made my heart stumble and skip a beat. Her sweet-girly smile seemed hideously out of place together with those two devilish eyes.   
  
  
  
"They are grinding you up, Spikey-boy! They are putting everything that is you into a giant blender and push on the mash-button till it's all mincemeat. Right until every part of you is no longer something of use, but just an endless source of pain."   
  
  
  
Her lip lifted up from her teeth as she spit out the word as if she was experiencing some of my suffering herself, and was caught in a grimace. When she looked at me again, the flames had been put out, leaving her eyes completely black like the coaled insides of incinerators.  
  
  
  
"Fate can be so cruel. Don't you think?"  
  
  
  
She raised my chin with a finger, forcing me to look at her, the black and ugly emptiness that was her soul reflected in her gaze.  
  
  
  
"Tell me, Spike. Don't you want this to end? Don't you want to get away, escape from all this?"   
  
  
  
I whimpered. My will and fear were strong enough to make me jump right up and run away like the bloody wind from this scary little bitch, but the rest of me was too broken and in too great an agony to actually do it. I was like a helpless bugger of an insect, trapped inside her spidery wed, bundled in a cocoon of lethal injuries and ready for bloody slaughter.   
  
  
  
" Don't be afraid." She said in a way that provided bogus comfort. "I'm here to help. I can do for you exactly that, what that self-centered bitch slayer can't or simply won't. I can make this stop. I can grand you peace. All you have to do is ask."  
  
  
  
"I - I - Don't - Please." I babbled, not sure what I was trying to say here, but watching her with the wide-eyed expression of a deer inspecting the rows of sharp pointy teeth inside a wolf's maul.   
  
  
  
"Look at those sad losers." She nodding toward the group of skeleton humans as they moved across the beach like a flock of deformed crabs. "Completely blind they are, and stubborn. Still hanging on to that last shred of hope that they have left. Carrying their sins like a bunch of Australian tourists hauling oversized backpacks. Up the hill they go, higher and higher, crawling on bleeding knees, to beg The Old Goat Almighty for forgiveness." She purged her lips, making a comic tsk-tsk sound. "And so, down and down they all fall, like a dumb herd of suicidal lemmings tripping on celestial sadomasochism. Every time they fail, the pain becomes greater, and their misery keeps on growing like a cancer till hope is no more than a mad whisper and they finally become loopy in the head. You don't want to end up like them, Spike. Believe me, you really deserve better than this."  
  
  
  
She stood up, grab hold of the leather reins of her horse, a normal pretty looking girl again. Her eyes had returned to their innocent green-blue color.   
  
  
  
Reaching out to me, she said; "Take my hand Spike. I'll bring you to a place where they'll no longer make you run inside this big giant pet wheel. You'll be free. There won't be any hope to deceive you, no dawny sky promising a new day that just will never come. Instead, there will be just - darkness." And she smiled affectionately at the thought of that. "Eternal darkness, sweet and comforting. You'll finally find your peace. It's where you belong. It's what you deserve."  
  
  
  
Her offered hand looked impossibly red in the cooked lobster colored light. Sharp contrasting shadows made her fingers seem to stretch out hideously long. They looked like claws with talons.   
  
  
  
"Trust me Spike. Take a ride with me."  
  
  
  
I sucked in a deep breath, and the smell of sulfur filling my up nostrils. God, I thought, she smelled like burned matches, she smelled like the bloody Devil.   
  
  
  
"Not going anywhere with you. Leave me alone." I whispered in a voice so small that it was not even picked up by my own ears, but she caught the message all right. Frowning and pouting like a spoiled little girl, she gazed down, astounded, as if she had just offered me heaven and had it rejected only for the puny reason that I was bloody daft like a pig's smelly rear end.   
  
  
  
"You want to go on with this? You seriously believe that you even have the slightest bit of chance at getting out of here, by your own?" She snorted sarcastically. "Spike, You're an idiot." She gave an angry tug on the reigns, making the horse's head bob. The animal neighed crossly at her in response.   
  
  
  
"No-one ever gets out! At least, not into the direction they prefer." She added with a sardonic smile.   
  
  
  
"No. Oh no." I shook my head, getting aware that I could possibly be telling Mrs Satan here herself that she was wrong. People never much liked that and I could only imagine that it was the same with these supernatural emissaries of evil with the capital E. "You're lying. There has to be another way to fix things. There must be." I licked my lips nervously, tasting ashes. "I rather keep the bit of hope I've left than to go for the complete bugger you have to offer."  
  
  
  
That last bit wiped the smile right off her face.   
  
  
  
"You fool!" She said, scowling at me, screeching like a witch. "You are going to fall, Spike! Again and again! You are going to be the rat in the maze of a sick kid's twisted science project!"   
  
  
  
"Luv," I said, feeling light in the head, fear quickly turning into insanity. "I rather stick to misery a thousand times worse than this than to go anywhere with you. So why don't you just gallop along on your jade and go to hell."  
  
  
  
The change of expression on her face made me wish I could have bitten off my daft tongue. Fires lit up inside her eyes, burning the blue into deep indigo and bright yellow as the flames shoot up, then turning into a restless tawny-crimson.   
  
  
  
"Well." She said, deceivingly calm. "That was rude."   
  
The corners of her mouth crooked. There wasn't even a ghost of badly acted goodwill left on her features.   
  
  
  
"Still, if this is what you want."  
  
  
  
She rose upright in the stirrups, turned her head and gazed at the east. A hot wind swelled up from the sea, swirling and raging like a soddin tornado, sweeping up the dark sands from the shore. It burned the sand, literally incinerated it, turning it in clouds of amber and tossed them back on the ground as hot beads of glass. The burning corkscrew wind moved toward the girl on her black steed, and consumed her completely. Her skin started to blacken, bits of it was flaking off like a hideous sort of dandruff. Her white outfit curled up like paper above a hot fire. Flesh shredded from her bones, cut to bloody pieces by the blasting hot sand and burned down to crumbly bits of coal.   
  
  
  
"Goodbye Spike." She said, it looked like she was grinning mockingly at me with her bubblegum lips scorched back from her teeth, and I could see the red cables of tendons and muscles that moved her exposed jawbone. "You've just lost your last chance to save yourself. Now you're left on your own."  
  
  
  
She turned her horse around and then yelled;   
  
"You'll be falling forever!"  
  
  
  
She spurred her skeleton horse and the creature reared and started galloping to the west. Both animal and rider seemed to be on fire, a trail of flames torched in their wake like a red cape as they went, the nightmare girl shrieking that curse to me above the sound of horse-hoofs pounding into the sand.   
  
  
  
I backed away when a large shadow fell over my face. When I looked up, the horseman was there again with his bare jaw grinning, while the red hellish glow throbbed inside his dead eyes. He raised his hand and pointed with his bony finger toward the mountain, toward the endless stream of suffering human carcasses moving toward it. Human leftovers, Pete would say. Not even the mutts in the ditch would care much about them, not enough meat on the bones. They climb up the steps carved in the rocks that didn't lead to salvation or forgiveness or anything good, but only to destruction, to more pain and more misery and more suffering, and I'll be suffering endlessly now. I'm doomed to carry myself up that mountain over and over again, till the flesh rots off my bones and till my bones are reduced to ash to fill up the sand on the black beach.   
  
  
  
I think I must be in hell.   
  
  
  
Somewhere, from behind the mountain, I heard that the girl was still shrieking at me. Or maybe it was only her voice trapped inside my head.  
  
  
  
"You'll be falling Spike - falling forever!"  
  
  
  
A mad grin spread over my lips, and as I tried to laugh, my broken ribs stung into my lungs like a million wasps-stings, making me gag up blood. I watched, sullen and mad, how the horseman raised his bullwhip, and let it come down on my stomach. I kept laughing, right till the welts on my belly broke open and a hideous wound the size of a bloody caesarian section spilled out my guts like a stinking brown fountain rising from the broken sewage.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
NEXT PART   
  
  
  
  
  
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	10. Falling Forever part 2

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2.  
  
"No! Not that. Not like her! Not like that pregnant woman! Please!"  
  
"Will!!!!"  
  
"Somebody! SOMEBODY! HELP ME! HELP ME!!!!"  
  
A wave of ice-cold water rolled over me, splashed over my face and tore me away. I gulped and gasped. Drowning. Drowning in my own bed, the white coils of linen twisting around my body like some monstrous tentacles trying to drag me under.   
  
"Will!! Will! Wake up!"  
  
A voice. Pete's voice, yelling nearby. I opened my eyes. The lad's face hovered above me like a pale slice of freckled cheese.   
  
"God! That-that bloody thing." I panted, running a shivering hand through my hair as I sat up right on my cot, pulling my knees so far up that they were sticking into my belly. "It was that bloody dream again. That bloody nightmare."  
  
Pete looked like he was nagged by guilt.  
  
"I'm sorry. I tried everything as soon as I saw you trashing, but you just wouldn't wake up, no matter how hard I yelled at ye."  
  
He dropped the empty bucket on the floor, and picked up some dirty piece of clobber lying around to drape it around my shoulders. I used a sleeve to dry my face, feeling cold, and trembled like a leaf in the draft. Bradbury, Higgins and Pete, they were all standing around my cot, staring down with a mixed expression of sympathy and horror.   
  
"I'm sorry, Will. I really am." Pete mumbled, and I remembered promising the boy last night that I would pound him into powder when he failed to wake me up in time, but there wasn't enough strength left in me to get seriously pissed at him. I was completely drained. My body felt like a stiff, curious wax job.   
  
"It was just a dream, my friend." Bradbury said, gently putting a hand on my shoulder. "Calm down now. You're back in the land of harsh reality."  
  
"God." I muttered, rubbing my eyes, rubbing the sleep away and with that, the frightening experience of the nightmare broke down into more easily to swallow bits and pieces. It was a good thing that my friends were here. That I had friends, and an ordinary world to wake up to.   
  
"Here." Higgins pushed a bottle of gin under my smeller. "Take a sip of that. Might warm you up a bit."  
  
I took the flask and poured the content into my mouth where my tongue was lying on the bottom like a mummified rodent. The booze lit my throat with pleasant warmth that quickly spread down into my stomach. Coughing a bit, and piercing through half squinted eyes, I gave all the fellas a good look and noticed that they were dressed up real fancy and rather formerly. Even Higgins was stuck in an ill-fitting suit, making him look like a bloated, over-cooked sausage.   
  
  
  
"What the bloody hell is this?" I said, puzzled and frowning. "Are you going to a funeral or anything?" Then, after giving it a second thought, added worryingly. "It was just a dream right? I didn't really die."  
  
"No, you silly boy." Bradbury said. "It's Saturday! We were going back to the National Gallery. Don't you remember the luxurious amount of loot you earned for us yesterday? The celebration with the expensive wine? William, the purse-snatching champion of the National Gallery? The King of the Finger-smiths?"  
  
"Yeah, and Darling Dashing Will, and Willie o-Dearie." I added, certain highly disturbing images of the old prof dancing around starkers with his dog and balls cheerily bouncing along, rushed back into my head. "Right. The ten pounds fifty snatched from the snobby wankers at the public Italian exposition. The gorging and drinking party afterwards. I remember it now." I nodded, somehow feeling relieved that I really could dig it up from the murky brown waters of my otherwise frequently faltering memory. "And Pete and I are going back today to get more." I studied the tall black top hat, the flannel trousers and split tailed jacket Bradbury was dressed in, making him look like the ringmaster of a county-fair circus, and I stared at Higgins, trapped inside his blue, long sleeved vest with the tortured rows of buttons barely holding things together, his dark hear brushed back and gleaming with fat, making him look like a soddin freak-show. A cheery little organ tune that was associated to dancing monkeys and goofing clowns grinded inside my mind's ears. Ladies and gentlemen! Bradbury would yell at the introduction, tipping the rim of his top hat in a flamboyant gesture; Open your eyes in wonder and behold! Mr Dean Higgins, the World's one and only Greasy Human Sausage!  
  
"Oh! You two are not coming with us, are ya?" I asked, fearing the obvious but hoping for the other.   
  
  
  
Bradbury said nothing, just hitched his brows and gave me a wide grin, which told me quite enough.   
  
"Oh, Bollocks." I muttered, rolling my eyes up to the strings of cobwebs dangling from the ceiling. "Oh balls."  
  
TBC  
  
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	11. Falling Forever part 3

3.  
  
That feeling. That strange one that you get when you think something has happened to you before. That you have seen it, and know how things are going to turn out just seconds before they actually happen. There was a particular word for it. Soddin French like eating frog-legs and consuming large quantities of garlic flavoured snails. What was it again? Déjà vu. Right, that's it. That was the bloody word I was digging for!  
  
There was a young couple; a woman, dressed in a flesh coloured gown with lace trimmings at her up-right collar and sleeves, her auburn hair tied into a bun at the back of her white swan-neck. She was with a short, brooding bloke in a black three-piece suit with a golden watch-chain looping across his grey vest. They were standing just to the right side of me, only pretending to be interested in a violently coloured picture of Holy Mary nursing a fat baby Jesus in her mumly arms, but actually, they both were too occupied with dealing with more personal matters to notice bugger of anything else around them.  
  
I was minding my own business, flexing my fingers, my eyes hooked on that bloke's wallet that stuck out of his back pocket like a luring candy cane in a clumsy toddler's fist. And that was when it hit me. That déjà vu thing. Hit me like a soddin smack by a rotating windmill.  
  
That girl, she is going to crumble up a letter in her hand and nod with her pretty head while that git standing beside her starts accusing her and then keeps on rambling like a lunatic.  
  
"This is unacceptable!" The poofter in the black suit hissed. "He shouldn't be writing you this! Everybody knows that we're engaged!"  
  
The girl bowed her head and stared at the envelope that she held in her hands, wrinkling it as she clenched her fingers around the paper.  
  
"And writing such insolent filth! Such pretentious, incompetent dribble! I read it, you know! Every single word that came from the perverted mind of that lovesick poet of yours! HA! Poetry, you call this? It doesn't even bloody rhyme most of the time!"  
  
She started nodding then, warily. Her large chestnut eyes were glossy with tears. Her hands tried to hide the letter between the folds of her dress.  
  
"If it wasn't for the maid!" the crazed lunatic of a jealous fiancée of hers exclaimed. "If it wasn't for her, I would have been totally unaware of all this. What you were up to behind my back! You and your impious male friend would have been quite successful in keeping your rancid rendezvous a secret from me!" he raised his hand and waved a finger at her while his head became redder and redder till it looked like he would just bloody explode, and spittle flew from his lips. "God! That puny little shit! He's lusting after you like a rancid dog wagging his tail after a wet little bi- "  
  
He managed to swallow the word, just in time. From the side, I could see a large vein pounding angrily in his neck. Just like I had known it would, and I thought:  
  
Now she is finally going to say something. She won't say anything real nasty to defy him though. Oh no, she wouldn't dare. At least, not yet that is.  
  
"Henry." The woman whispered. "Please, don't be so angry. He's just a boy. A boy struck by calf-love who's busying himself writing silly poetry. He doesn't know anything about us."  
  
But Henry wasn't going to calm down, not before the dimwit had made a complete arse out of himself and had turned her into the popular subject of every fancy tea-party the gossiping upper-class bints were going to throw for the next couple of months. I stood a good few of feet away from the angry bugger and still I could sense the hate pulse off his body like a bad odour damping from his cheesy armpits. But it wasn't any of my business, I thought, even if I happened to have some sort of strange precognition about what the two bickering upper-class twats were up to, it was no issue of mine, so I checked the green eyed goop's back pockets again and saw that his purse was tauntingly close, but I kept my hands buried deep inside my own pockets. Didn't want to strike out yet. It wasn't the right time, because Henry wasn't finished with fooling around.  
  
He was going to read it. I knew it even before he snatched the envelope out of her slightly trembling hands and tore it open like he was dealing with the correspondent instead of his correspondence. Henry the bloody bastard was going to recite the poem that was meant for his fiancée's eyes only, out-loud in public for all of us to hear.  
  
"Henry! No!" She cried, no longer keeping her voice down to the low murmur that was kind of the standard for civilized private conversation, and she made a couple of heads turn into their direction. Not that it would change anything. Henry was about to blow it wide open, dish the dirt, blow the gaff. No more closet dancing for the two of them. The scrutiny by others be soddin damned.  
  
"You said it was poetry, right darling?" He yelled at her in a haughty boisterous voice. "It's art then, isn't it? If anything this ridiculous open-door policy of the National Gallery had taught me, it must be that art should be shared freely with others. So why don't we share this twinkling little gem of a masterpiece with the rest of the good company we're in, my dear? I'm sure that, among the graceless fishwives and petty self-made Yorkshire men, we'll find at least one or two illiterate imbeciles who would know how to appreciate this!"  
  
The entire company turned their attention to the short bloke with the red face and the offensive loud voice of a public announcer. Even Pete and Bradbury, who were working at the other side of the hall near the white columns and the wall with the small collection of dead-ugly da Vinci drawings, were distracted for moment and craned their necks to see what was happening here.  
  
Henry smiled a real wanker's smile, and stared triumphantly at his miserable fiancée, whose cheeks had turned the colour of bleached linen by now.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen." He barked, grinning madly. "I give you a poem by Mr Paul Alderman, who's apparently worshipping and may be even bedding my lovely fiancée at the moment. The honoured lady Francesca of Sussex!"  
  
"Please, no." I heard the woman whisper, but it was already too late. Envy had eaten away the last bits of Henry's sanity, and with a voice that balanced at the verge of having the nutty giggles, he started to read. In my head I unconsciously started reciting the entire bloody thing, following the movement of his lips, as if I actually knew it by heart.  
  
Perfect by nature,  
  
she is a waterfall of dark passion.  
  
Lustful eyes that had captured my soul.  
  
Sinful lips, pulsing heat.  
  
Her longing for a true love.  
  
Untold.  
  
Restrained by nurture,  
  
She is a wall of rigid indifference.  
  
Scornful brows that had shattered my heart.  
  
Silent mouth, filled with deceptive lies,  
  
for true is her heart,  
  
but dishonest are her words.  
  
Grieving, my lady puts  
  
her throbbing heart  
  
inside a mute tomb  
  
and seals it with hot tears.  
  
My lady and I are divided,  
  
a vast, dark ocean lies between  
  
my love and I.  
  
But our souls remain.  
  
Together,  
  
connected they are in dreams.  
  
In dreams, we bond.  
  
I dream.  
  
I caress your corpse-white skin.  
  
At the shore of my delusion,  
  
I kiss your cold-cold lips,  
  
And watch you return to life.  
  
And under the diamonds,  
  
Of a high red sky  
  
I drown,  
  
inside the flood  
  
of your wet sex -  
  
"That's enough! Do you hear me, Henry? Enough!" Her voice trembled, and her hands were clenched into delicate white knuckled fists.  
  
Henry the git smiled back at her with all the charm of a growling weasel.  
  
"Oh, but you have to let me read this, darling! I haven't even got to the real saucy bits yet. We must continue for the sake of this fine piece of artistic pornography, I insist!"  
  
Her hand shot out like a pale bolt of lightening, slapping him so hard across his right cheek that it echoed inside the crowded hall. Henry just gazed at her, startled and with his gob finally shut. He slowly raised his hand up to his struck face and she was able to snatch the poem back from him. She ripped it into a thousand pieces. The shattered remains of the poem landed on her dress and the gallery floor like a white flock of irregularly shaped seabirds.  
  
"You." She said, her voice soft but vibrant with anger. "I loathe you. I HATE you. You're lower than a worm, and I wish you to hell!"  
  
She stared at him for a while. Not saying anything but just glaring him with her chestnut eyes all spitting daggers. Then she slowly turned around on her heels, shooting a hateful glance at the people in the crowd who were gawking at her like she was a deformed calf with three heads. She took a good deep breath like she was preparing herself for a dive, raised her chin up high and made her way through the group. I smiled, because I felt that she did right not to give a bugger all about those hypocritical twats. After she was gone, the feeling of having a seriously bad case of being all- knowing suddenly stopped. It was like I had been watching the first act of a badly written play with lots of overdramatic dialogue and very irritating characters. One that I'd seen before and now that it was finally over, I'd gotten out my seat to rush into the direction of the big exit sign. Henry, the dandy lady-killer with the refined taste in poetry, still stood there, gob-smacked with his hand rubbing over his cheek. Easy picking. I reached out and grabbed the git's wallet, stuck it into my pocket, turned around and made my way through the crowd toward the da Vinci collection where my mates were waiting for me.  
  
"What was that all about?" Bradbury asked, flashing an eyebrow.  
  
Pete had obviously seen more of the action. "Did she really hit him? He asked, eager to know. "She hit him, right? She smacked him! Right in the face! Did you see it, Will? Did you?"  
  
I handed my price over to the boy using our special finger-smith's handshake. "Just a bit of hearts juggling among the upper-class twats." I said. "Nothing big. And yes she did, Pete. I got a good look at the red handprint she left behind on his ugly bloated mug."  
  
"Wicked!" The boy grinned. "I hate that bloke! He sounds like he got his balls jammed between doors. He sounds like a real snooty bastard!"  
  
"And that poem he recited. Absolutely dreadful stuff." Bradbury opted.  
  
"Really? I thought it was rather good." I said, blinking slightly in disbelief. "I mean, it wasn't exactly something worth to be bundled into a collection and shipped to the stores or anything, but it wasn't that terrible."  
  
"Will, Will, Will." And Bradbury shook his head at me real sadly. " I'm afraid that I should reconsider your taste in poetry with true abomination if you applaud to that sort of mindless adolescent drivel." He said. " It's a good thing you don't write. The effect of such verbal ravishment on the lady of your affection could only be devastating, I imagine."  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Later that afternoon (and a good bunch of fat wallets later) I bumped into her again. As soon as I set eyes on her, that odd feeling returned together with a quiet nagging, something that was not completely right. A cat on hot bricks sort of feeling, right before the cat gets its paws roasted and jumps off the soddin wall in a suicidal dive, that sort of thing. She was sitting together with a girl who was dressed very plainly and who could only be her maid, on a bench underneath a large painting that covered half of the wall. It was that one with that medieval Dante bloke standing in the middle of his fairy tale nightmare. All of a sudden, I knew that whoever had written her that letter was about to show up to get his heart pulverized.  
  
"I'm sorry madam, truly sorry!" The maid lamented. She was a frail little thing with red curls and freckles and had all the manners of a scuttling field mouse. Even her voice sounded squeaky, like a frightened rodent caught in a trap. "Lord Spencer, he caught me by surprise, madam. He saw me talking to Mr Alderman and intercepted the letter when I was hurrying back, trying to deliver it to you!" The woman who had been so recently scorned by her idiot fiancée, tried her best to fake a smile at her, but I thought that the result looked rather unconvincing, like she had just swallowed a good swig of vinegar or had brushed her teeth with lemon juice and was trying to convince her maid that it didn't sting that much at all. "It's all right, I don't blame you, Mary. If there's really anyone to blame here, it should be me. Me, and perhaps that mindless buffoon Henry." She cast her eyes down at her hands on her lap where they were busy garrotting the remains of what was once a delicate lady's handkerchief. Instead of the ghostly paleness, her cheeks now carried a flush that spread over her nose and ears, and she looked like she was about to cry or to start swearing real loud.  
  
"God, what an idiot he is! We'll be the laughing stock of whole of London by tomorrow! Everybody in our circle is bound to know. I can't even bare the thought to go home and tell Papa what just happened. It's too horrible! Too horrible for words!"  
  
I walked up to the two women and went to stand behind them, pretending to be looking at the large medieval painting, but cautiously following their conversation instead. Mind you, I'm not a nosy wanker, only did this because I had that peculiar feeling again. You see, I knew what she was going to say seconds before she actually said it, which was not much of a sense of precognition if you looked at it from a "I-want-to-make-lots-of- easy-money-at-the-dog's-races" sort of way, but it was there and you had to admit that it was soddin strange. The bloody eerie thing was (and that was the most important reason why I had such interest. It was some kind of morbid fascination I wager, the way you just had to stop walking by and stare at a horrible accident that was bound to happen) that I knew exactly, word by word, what she was going to tell him. Just like the poem, I could recite her like a diligent scholar mouthing after Shakespeare. The question that haunted me of course was how - and why - I should know all this in the first bloody place. What in bleedin hell it had anything to do with me?  
  
"Franny, are you all right?"  
  
She looked up. Startled first, but then she recognized him, and the shocked expression on her face quickly made way for overall glumness.  
  
"You." She sighed. "I don't want to see you."  
  
The young man was about my age. He was slimly built with deep sunken eye- sockets like he hadn't slept once in his entire lifetime on his head grew an unruly, clumsy hairdo. He wore thin spectacles and stared at the girl with that real sad dreamy look that was enough to let me know that the poor lad was completely buggered. I didn't need to use my special eerie insight to see that he was the poor lovesick nit, who had fabricated that now famous poem Tactless Henry was so particularly excited about.  
  
"I understand." And he nodded his head like a wooden jack escaped from his box, eager to please. "You must be angry with me. It was stupid of course not to take more care when I was getting Mary to bring you that letter. If you want, I could go away and visit you tonight at your father's house."  
  
Her eyes were cold when she observed him. They looked like the eyes of someone I knew but couldn't really remember, the existence of that particular person, and I thought it was a girl, was only a shard of broken memory, a glimpse of a dream. It didn't matter that Francesca of Sussex's eyes were almond shaped and brown like shiny chestnuts, and the ones in my mind were round and green-blue like a stormy ocean, or maybe I remembered it all wrong and they were even a shade darker then hers, large and black like those of a startled deer. The colour didn't really matter. The shape wasn't important. It was the expression that those eyes carried that really mattered. That dismissive look that said: What are you doing here? You're not a part of my life! You're nothing to me! How dare you even to show up and breathe my air and occupy my space? And where did you find the IMPUDENCE to SPEAK to me?! Looking at that God-awful expression on that haughty woman's face made me want to grab her by her bony arms and shake her like an irritating loose pebble in a shoe, shake her and yell at her. Ask the bloody bint what the bleedin hell was wrong with all the bitches in this world, why in hell's name they all had their blind googly eyes stuck at their soddin backsides!  
  
"No Paul." She said, and her voice sounded even frostier, absolutely sub- zero now. "You better not."  
  
"But perhaps what happened today is a good thing, Franny!"  
  
"How on earth can this be a good thing, Paul?"  
  
The young man shrugged. "Henry now knows everything. There's no longer any need for us to hide our feelings for each other."  
  
He lowered his eyes shyly to the ground. His object of affection however, was like a statue, with a heart carved out of solid granite. On her face was a look of absolute horror and I braced myself for the impact.  
  
"I don't have any feelings for you, Paul." And she shook her head angrily at him. " I never had."  
  
The puny poet's expression was one of flabbergasted bewilderment. When he spoke, he sounded like a sheep, bleating away in the field. "That's - That's not true. You're just telling me this because you're angry with me."  
  
"No Paul." She said. I was quickly developing a major dislike for the way she wore out the poor bloke's name, like it was her favourite curse or anything, that she said "Paul" every time she meant balls or bollocks. And now she sounded real sympathetic, real vomitey sensitive toward his feeling.  
  
"It's not because I'm angry with you. It's how things really are. I was never in love with you. You were just making it all up inside that little fantasy world of yours." She put a hand on her breasts, inhaled deeply and continued in a teary voice.  
  
" I thought it was harmless. I mean every lady likes to have poetry written about her. Of course we do. It's flattering. But it's just words, Paul. Ink wasted on paper pages. It has nothing to do with reality."  
  
"But - all of my poetry readings you attended, and the private sittings that we had together -" He gulped, then his voice broke down and then he started to sound all teary, real pathetic. "I read to you out on my study's balcony at night under the stars. You sat on my lap at my desk, whispering words into my ears." He cocked his head to one side like a whipped dog and then he whispered. "You are my muse, Franny."  
  
"I only regarded you as a friend. I'm sorry Paul, if I let you believe that there was ever more to it than friendship."  
  
"You're lying." He said, shaking his head. " You're only trying to deceive me and yourself with this!"  
  
"I'm not lying to you. I don't love you, and I'm not your goddamned muse! I'm Francesca of Sussex, and I'm engaged to lord Henry Spencer, the man I'm bound to marry. You, are Paul Alderman, a struggling poet, talented perhaps, but you're nothing compared to Henry."  
  
She looked away, turned her wasp-waisted body away from him and gazed at the picture behind her instead. She was looking at that funny looking multi- layered wedding cake that was painted in the middle of the panel, the one that the sweaty bloke in the black suit had explained to be picturing the mountain of Purgatory. There were men and women struggling up that mountain, carrying large slates of stones on their crooked backs. The road up to the top slithered around the mountain like a large ash-coloured snake.  
  
Suddenly, my heart started to beat much faster.  
  
"You should stop writing me." The cold vixen said, her face still turned away from the poofy poet as if she couldn't stand to the look of him any longer. " Henry just made a terrible scene in public after reading one of your less exotic poems. I can't imagine what he would do if he knew about the rest you've written about me."  
  
Her voice was only registered somewhere at the back of my mind. My attention was turned to the picture, my eyes scanning feverishly over the hundreds of tiny faces painted on the canvas. There was a man with an amputated leg who was falling off the mountain, his mouth opened to utter a scream and his hand snatched like a vulture's claw at a boy's leg, who happened to be so unlucky to be standing nearby. Beneath them, miles away and stretching out like a grotesque ashy flower bedding, was a graveyard of pale bones.  
  
Look at those sad losers. I heard a frightening but very familiar voice whisper inside my head. Completely blind they are, and stubborn. Carrying their sins like a bunch of Australian tourists hauling along oversized backpacks.  
  
"I can't do that! That would be like silencing my heart!" He was weeping now, I didn't have to turn around to see the big crocodile tears dripping down his chin or the large red spot spreading over his nose, making it look like a snotty strawberry. "I know you, Franny. I know you better than that you know yourself! You're lying to me. It's like that last poem that I've written about us. You do love me, but you're just too afraid to admit it! You're afraid every time that you're offered a chance to let your heart speak out! Why Franny? God, why?"  
  
I couldn't find what I was looking for by staring at the faces of the damned, but something else struck me like a knife's cold blade pressed on the throat and made the hairs at the back of my neck all raise. I looked again, because I thought my eyes must have got it wrong. But then I still saw it. I saw that the picture was changing. The sky that had been dark, grey and gloomy started to glow eerily, like someone was playing a sick practical joke on me and was lighting up the canvas from the back with a red light-bulb, giving the starless sky a touch of fresh aortic crimson. Just like it had been stabbed with a knife and was now slowly bleeding to death, I thought, and for a moment, I was sure I was going to lose my soddin mind. The painful argument of the star-crossed drama queens was a soft drone coming from a thousand miles away.  
  
The woman, who was undoubtedly reacting in the way she'd learned from her tortured heroines from her favourite romantic novels, seemed to be totally unaware of the change inside the painting. She was looking at the same bloody thing all right, but I figured from her still composed facial expression and the lack of horror in her eyes, that she was only looking without seeing, just the way she had been looking at the poor wretch who was now pouring his heart out in front of her. She was like an imbecile strapped to the bed gazing up at cracks in the ceiling, eyes wide open but all of her neurons were firing bugger to the brain.  
  
"Oh bollocks." I whispered, a nauseating feeling rolled inside my stomach like an empty shell toiling in the soddin breakers. The picture slowly, gradually, started to sway, going from right to left and back again, drifting on an invisible ocean. Or maybe, I thought and I fiercely hoped, I was only moving my head unconsciously. Maybe my legs were just giving up.  
  
"Let go of me - Don't touch me!" The woman yelled. And I knew that the desperate poet had grabbed her now by her wrist and was begging her with dog-faithful eyes to admit that one thing to him. That one soddin thing that he needed to hear from her. The words that could save them both and break this endless circle, this unfinished business between the girl and him that was happening perhaps for the millionth time by now. It's like they are running around in a giant pet wheel, I thought, and mad giggles escaped my throat, a string of noisy bubbles, cause it was then that I suddenly realized that we were ALL running inside a giant pet wheel. Pete and Bradbury and Higgins. Doll and her sick mum and that fat Henry twat I just met. All going round and round and doing things for the millionth- trillionth time without knowing anything. Without someone to tell them to stop being this daft, to stop running because there was no soddin point to it. God, I wished that picture would stop moving. I was so close to getting the bloody pukers.  
  
And then the weeping writer really started to lose it. "Franny!" He yelled, and suddenly he didn't sound like a sad little noche anylonger. There was fear in his voice, fear and desperation and he sounded real mad. "Franny, you have to listen to me! Admit it! Do it now! It's your last chance! It's OUR last chance! Don't let me go through all of this again! You have to let it STOP!"  
  
But Franny wasn't going to say anything. She never did. She wasn't going to throw away the rest of her life by becoming Mrs Alderman, the spouse of a talented but rather unsuccessful poet. She wouldn't dream to turn in her luxurious house for a poorly furnished, dirty old studio, or exchange her pretty silk gowns for plain looking rags even her maid Mary wouldn't wear, or return the golden engagement ring with the diamond settings to Henry to replace it with a red ribbon tied around her finger, one on which Paul had scribbled their names in his wavy love-sick handwriting. Instead, she was going to lie, rip her lover's heart into a million tiny pieces like she had done to his offensive poem, and she was going to kill herself by doing so.  
  
"Let go Mr Alderman! You're scaring my mistress!" The field-mouse of a maid squeaked.  
  
"Let go of me I said! How dare you to speak to me like that! You're mad! You're out of your bloody mind!" His precious Franny sneered.  
  
And I thought; Right you are, luv. We're all mad. All obligatory sinners here who fell of the bloody mountain and landed on our noggins one time too many. So round and round we all go, going up and down, crawling on our bleeding knees in this giant pet's wheel like a dumb herd of suicidal lemmings. And now-now I'm really going to throw up.  
  
I gagged, expecting my body to take care of the rest and lurch forward to get rid of the bloody nausea, but instead, I kept waving back and forth like a tall pine in the wind. I could hear myself panting faintly, while my head rolled over my shoulders as if it had somehow become disconnected from my neck.  
  
"Something wrong here, miss?" A man asked and at the same time, someone caught me by my shoulders right before my head swung way too far back for me to keep my balance. If it wasn't for that, I would had creaked my skull on the spotlessly polished marble floor. My floppy body had just decided that it wanted me to lie down for a while, just until everything stopped moving.  
  
"Whoa! Are you all right, sir? Do you need to sit down?" A friendly gentleman's voice asked. I rolled my head around as if it could possibly mean anything, and overheard the conversation between the other man and the unfortunate couple.  
  
"Is this young man threatening you?" The meddler asked.  
  
"That's absurd!" The artistic bugger explained. "I was not threatening her! Look, she knows me! We were just talking!"  
  
"Really? I have to say, it didn't look like you were having a quiet conversation to me, sir. No Sir! Not at all! The lady was asking for help and you were holding on to her like you were trying to drag her away from her maid."  
  
"He was pinching in my mistress's arm! Screaming like a madman! Look at it, she has red bruises everywhere!" The squeaky maid complained.  
  
I heard a loud sniffling followed by a wet sob, which was undoubtedly coming from the somewhat ruffled mistress.  
  
"I - I didn't mean to hurt her." Poetic boy rambled. "I just - just wanted her to listen to me."  
  
I shut my eyes, and felt how hot blood pulsed inside my sockets. Someone walked me over to the bench. The man who was prying with the young couple was asked politely to step aside to let me sit down. He did and I gratefully obliged. I kept thinking to myself that I had imagined it. It can't be real. I thought. Pictures don't change, they just don't. Not even the ones that seem to be bloody book- illustrations of your own bloody nightmares.  
  
"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me just then - Franny, please." The poet tried, but there was no more strength left in his voice, he sounded defeated, no longer all fired up by his desperation and fear. He sounded sane again, and quite dead.  
  
"Don't you dare lay your hands on me again." She hissed. "I don't want to speak to you. I don't want to see you. I want you to get out of my life!"  
  
I opened my eyes, slowly, and different patches of vision blurred into each other, till I could see in focus again. The swaying had completely stopped, which was a true blessing.  
  
"But Fran -"  
  
"Hey! You heard the lady!" The nosy pillock interfered. "Now move along, sir. Before I have to cuff you and drag you down to the station."  
  
The words cuff and station cut into the calming pace of my heart and sent it right into a frenzied gallop again. I peeked at the bloke who was playing saviour for the lady in distress. He was a large, elderly man, with sagging folds were once his cheeks had been and a drooping moustache that covered all of his upper lip. He reminded me of the big fat walrus who ate all the oyster orphans in Alice in Wonderland. Even more upsetting, he reminded me of someone I'd seen at the exposition only yesterday, and even now that he was no longer wearing his split ended coat, I recognized him as the bollard eye bloke who had been watching us till I got the bloody creepers. Sweat broke out at my back. Slowly, I rose up from the bench and tried to get the hell out without him noticing. But as soon as I had taken one or two steps, the room started to wobble again like a plate full of blackcurrant jelly, strapped to a bloody hippopotamus crossing swamps. Breathing heavily, I spun myself around and headed for the corridors, becoming aware that our secluded corner of the exposition hall was now bathing in reddish light, coming from the side of the wall where the picture of Dante's Divine Comedy was exhibited.  
  
I'm not going to look over my shoulder to see if it's really coming from where I think it is coming. I told myself. No, I'm not going to see if there were now skeleton demons galloping on ink black horses around the painting or people crawling out of the sea like swarms of really deformed cod. No - bloody - way.  
  
"Hey there my friend! Where do you think you're going like that! You better stay put."  
  
A hand locked around my upper arm, but I twisted my arm like a wheel and ended up with my hand lifted at shoulder's height in a gesture that said that the helpful bloke should back off.  
  
"Don't need your help." I managed to mumble with a wax mouth. "Just - need a breath of fresh air. Need to get outside."  
  
I stumbled away, my hands reaching out for the wall to find some support. My sweaty palm searched to find the smooth cool marble, but it touched the sharp edges of rough mountain rock instead. My heart just sunk like a walloping whale, my stomach adding a couple of extra knots. If I turn around right now, I thought, if I turn around I will see a deep gaping abyss laughing back at me like some dark hungry maul filled with rocky teeth. There will be pushing and screaming of folks trying to get up the mountain, trying to bloody survive, and there will the thick stench of decaying flesh hanging around like a cloud of toxic gas. And for a moment, I did sense those horrible things. I did feel the nearly dead scrape their ulcerous skin over my own. My ears rung with the violent screams of despair and my nose picked up the nauseating smell of dead corpses left to rot in the hot sun. Oh God, I just managed to whisper, and then I felt how my legs turned into pudding and I collapsed on the floor.  
  
"Are you all right, sir?" A voice, a man's voice, different from the first. It was lower with a more growling quality to it and it sounded sort of muffled like the bloke was speaking from behind a thick curtain. My heart jumped up to my throat where it stuck to pound like a mad drum. The red glow became brighter, as if a blood red sun had just risen inside the hollow bowels of the gallery hall. I urged myself to keep my eyes on the floor, but it was like I was completely daft or something. I turned my head and let my eyes fall on the painting.  
  
The picture was now a large crimson rectangle, a thin canvas of black lines and dark blots, running across the surface like an intricate web of arteries with spots of rupture. It pulsed! The bloody thing just pounded like a living, breathing thing, a membrane sack covering the foetus of a hideous monster. The mountain of Purgatory in the middle had somehow come closer, like the thing had crawled its way to the boundaries, nudging itself snugly against the frame, and now the soddin thing was dominating the entire landscape! The humans on the slopes had turned hideously deformed with sunken faces and black empty eyes, an army of the damned with screaming skulls carried around on frighteningly thin necks and skeleton bodies bearing horrible wounds. And that Dante bloke had totally disappeared. Only his book was there, lying all deserted on the ground. It was flipped open, facing the public, and someone had scribbled lines across the pages with ink that was red and runny like fresh pig's blood.  
  
It read;  
  
Saints go heaven - Sinners go to hell. The rest of us are doomed to fall forever.  
  
"Right." I muttered, then added sardonically. "Redrum Redrum."  
  
The picture throbbed faster and faster, with the illusive mountain in the middle pounding madly like a decaying heart. Screams echoed in my ears when the humans threw themselves off the cliffs, their falls depictured in the jerky movements of a film with not enough frames. The lines of paint started to melt and run, turned liquid before my eyes, and was pumped across the entire surface, flowing and toiling like blood that went through veins. Cracks began to appear, like tiny organic rips in the folds of a tatty batwing. And then I heard it, the sound of horse hooves, coming nearer, and nearer, and nearer.  
  
"Sir! Sir! Can you hear me?"  
  
Someone shook me, and my head bounced around over my shoulders, the tiny bit of reason left in my brain rattling inside like lose grains of sand. No, I muttered, not again. Not -him- again. This wasn't real. This was NOT really happening. I had to turn away, shut my eyes, stop looking for bleedin's sake, but I just kept staring at it like I was a senseless idiot, my mind blank and my eyes as large as bloody saucers.  
  
A slap across the face, hard enough to rush the blood back into my cheek. Someone screamed into my ear and I blinked, two, three times, just enough to get me back at the reigns to put a halt to my galloping frenzy. I shut my eyes and with the same burning eagerness of a naïve little boy, wished real hard for the nightmare to go away.  
  
The chemical smell of sulphur and the stench of rot were gradually replaced by the dusty odour of rooms that hadn't been aired in centuries and the ripe smell of a gentleman's cologne. The sound of hooves also died down - todnot todnot - it sounded - todnot tod -todnot - tod -not - like a slowly unwinding clock, till only a soft thumping remained that became quickly undistinguishable from my own balmy heartbeat.  
  
"Oh God! - oh bollocks." Frightfully, I opened my eyes and saw that my hands were shivering badly.  
  
Some bloke was so helpful to help me get up.  
  
"It's all right, sir. I got you now! You really should get outside for some fresh air. It's too crowded in here and much too hot."  
  
"-That -that - that painting." I rambled, talking total gibberish. "It moved! The sky, the sky was all red!"  
  
"Painting?" The man followed my wide eyed stare and looked back over his shoulder. "You mean the one over there, the one painted by Michelino?"  
  
I staggered a few steps forward, my frightened senses telling me to get the hell away from it as far as possible, but the obliging pillock held firmly onto my arm, perhaps afraid that I would start tripping over my own feet again. Irritated, I glanced up at him, and for the first time since he had jolted me back up to my feet, I got a good look at his face.  
  
"What about it, sir?" He asked. His eyes met mine, confused bollard eyes that suddenly caught that same spark of recognition. His walrus moustache drooped down like heavy curtains at the end of a play, as did the corners of his mouth.  
  
"Wait a minute." He said, and his voice had that sort of affronted quality to it. "Wait a minute! I know you!"  
  
I did the trick with the wheeling arm again. At that moment, walrus face was too flabbergasted to hold on, and I could unlock myself easily out of his grip. Having now twice that many reasons to skedaddle out of the soddin place, I spun around, and fled toward the corridors. The pair of star- crossed lovers was still standing there and I almost bumped into the woman and would have knocked her down if it wasn't for poetry-boy who caught her by her delicate, injured little arms and jolted her out of my way. I did brush my hand over her hips for a just second though, and as I did, imagines started to flood into me. They were pictures of a not too distant future. I saw a room, a lady's bedroom, with a large opened window through which gushes of snow were blown in with the ghostly curtains billowing in the icy wind. A woman dangled from the ceiling, swinging like a pendulum, a noose made out of an expensive rose patterned scarf tightened around her pale neck. The carpet beneath her feet was entirely white, covered not by snow but with shattered pieces of paper that toil and flutter like a flock of impatient crows. She held a letter in her stiffening hand, and tied around her right hand ring finger was the red ribbon, a gift from her beloved poet, with the colour faded into a murky brown, the ink worn and aged. I blinked and the images were lost again. I caught her eyes as I looked up. There were fear and confusion in her chestnut eyes as if the spark of precognition that I just had was something that went both ways and she had caught a glimpse of it too. Or maybe she figured I was dangerous, and was just terrified that I might do something to her.  
  
"I'm sorry." I muttered, and I was. I really felt sorry for her after I knew everything, after I'd seen what would happen to her.  
  
"Me too." She whispered back. Her face was still a blank sheet with two frightened doe's eyes glittering in the middle. "I'm sorry for you too. And for that boy."  
  
Of course I didn't know what the bleedin hell she meant by that, but her sympathy and sincerity gave her message a grim gravity and I really wanted to ask her what she'd seen, but I had no time. Walrus face had snapped out of his temporarily brain paralysis and came after me, his walrus whisker's flaring and his drooping cheeks flushed like blobbing berries.  
  
"Hold that man!" He shouted, and glistering drops of spittle flew from his lips and landed on his monstrous moustache. "He's a pickpocket! Hold him!"  
  
I ran like the bloody wind, fled out of the main exhibition hall with the fancy marble pillars and the horrible painting, cut through the middle of the crowd like I was fighting my way through a thick forest, pushing away the bodies any protruding limps and kicking away their fashionable accessories, my head kept down so that the walrus bloke would hopefully lose sight. But instead, I heard him screaming and I knew that he was tailing not too far behind.  
  
"There! There he goes! Catch him! Catch the bloody crook!"  
  
Suddenly, the moving wall of bodies that had only been an annoying obstruction so far, started to grasp at me, trying to get hold of my clobber with long, greedy hands. Someone grabbed me by the shoulder so I gyrated around and gobbed him down so hard that the pillock crashed back into the crowd. They all fell down like soddin bailey that had been trampled in the field. Then some aristocratic bint started to scream real hysterically, because the grabby pillock was bleeding out of his nose like a butchered pig. That was perhaps something good though, because they all just glared at me then, all puffed eyed and nostrils wildly flaring and with their sleeves tugged up and fists all raised, but none of the gents really got the large enough googlies to stop me anymore. I bolted, and the crowd of stiff-bordered, pigeon eyed upper class twats parted like the bleedin red sea. Somewhere amid the fear and the panic, I found that I had enough cockiness left in me to feel real good about myself, but that didn't last for very long. Walrus face was still barking at them not to let me get away, and when I shot a glance over my shoulder I saw that two less gutless goons had joined the chase with that marine mammal faced bastard. I turned, my feet almost tripping over one and another because they each wanted to bolt into a different direction, and I knocked down a boy who suddenly stood in front of me with all the convenience of a bleedin flagpole in the middle of the road. When I looked down, I saw that it was Pete, frowning up at me with a bloody bedazzled expression on his freckled face.  
  
"Will! What's going on here?"  
  
"Walrus face." I panted, and I shot another flustered look over my shoulder. "He 's coming for the orphaned oysters."  
  
"Orphaned what?"  
  
But there was bugger-all time to educate the lad, so I just grabbed him by his shirt and jolted him back up from the floor. Walrus face's two helpful acquaintances were only a few human obstructions away from us. I turned Pete around and gave him an urging shove into the right direction.  
  
"Run!' I yelled. "Or we're bloody buggered!"  
  
I didn't have to tell him twice. Pete trusted me more than anything in the world and besides, he could read all the panic right off my face even if he had been soddin blind. We both bolted for it, ran through the halls and into the main corridor, and out into the streets. When we were on Trafalgar Square I kind of hoped that the blabbering bloke and the two meddling idiots would stop chasing us, b'cause the wobbling old wanker didn't come after us outside the gallery yesterday. So when we passed the iron doors and got down the steps we already started to slow down a bit to catch our breath. We didn't expect them to follow us out into the main street and when I heard walrus wanker shouting I almost had a soddin heart attack.  
  
"There they are!" He blabbered, and pointed at us while we were leaning against one of the stone lion statue trying to recuperate and rediscover how to breathe properly. "Don't just stand here! Catch them! Go take these criminals into custody!"  
  
And the two of them went running for us like a couple of well-trained guard dogs. As if the old wanker could just order the two dimwits what to do, as if he was not only a proper copper, but may also be a highly ranked officer as well. All three of them, bloody coppers out of uniform and in disguise to mingle with the crowd. Just our bloody luck.  
  
"Pete, we've got to try to get to Holborn." I said. We had to get off the bloody square and into the back street alleys. It was our only chance. Pete nodded knowingly and we both took off, running into the direction of Shaftesbury Ave and the White chapel district and I just hoped that we could shake off those bloody coppers in that maze of narrow and crooked streets.  
  
TBC 


	12. Falling Forever part 4

4.  
  
Pete and I ran all the way back to the White chapel district, homing at the familiar sight of the St Paul like a pair of trained homing pigeons. We pushed and shoved our ways through the crowds, rushing past streets that became dirtier and sleazier the more we left the better parts of London behind and entered the dark quarters of the poor. We ran, our persecutors angry shouts ringing in our ears, too afraid to stop and look back over our shoulders, fearing that we would lose whatever small lead we might had over those wankers. My lungs stung when I finally caught a glimpse of the cathedral, the peaks of the towers sticking out of the fog, rising above the tattered roofs like a burning beacon of a haven in the middle of a dark stormy sea. We scampered down the last wide street that we had to pass, then turned into a nameless alley, which was an entrance into the maze of intricate alleyways behind. When I crossed the line between dull daylight and became absorbed by the shadows thrown upon us by the buildings, something disturbing slivered into my mind. Another déjà vu I reckon, but it was clear as spring water and for a moment, I wasn't sure if it hadn't already happened, that it wasn't just a memory floating up from the murky puddle of my memory like a dead bloated rat.  
  
My temples pounded, drummed like mad and I heard myself huffing and blowing like a wind broke horse. I faced a damp brick wall. There was this strong sour smell, a smell of vinegar. My legs were useless, and I had to lean onto something, my hand reaching out for the wall for support. Someone was shouting at me, someone standing not far behind. I turned my head real sluggishly and saw it was Pete. His face was a freckled wax mask of fear and panic, and he kept shouting, but all I could pick up was my own name and nothing else. I frowned, confused, and I turned to the brick wall again and looked at the back of my hand.  
  
It was red.  
  
Blood red.  
  
I looked up at my other hand and saw that I was holding on to something. I raised it up and saw that it was a knife, Swiss army type and large. The taunt but razor sharp blade was pulled out. I stared at I, bewildered. It looked like it had two colours. The cold shiny surface at the base stood out sharply against the crimson, the dripping wine colour at the tip.  
  
Blood ran down the blade, sticky red trickles caught near the rim of the handle. One stubborn drop flooded from the pocket, and dripped down, onto the thin fold of skin between my thumb and finger.  
  
My throat made a strange, strangled noise and I tossed the bloody thing onto the ground. I heard footsteps, coming our way. Footsteps and boisterous, angry voices of men. Pete was still shouting at me, and when I turned around to face him again, I finally understood it. I finally knew what he was trying to tell me.  
  
"Will! Please! We have to run! They're coming! They're coming for us!"  
  
Pete grabbed me and tugged on my arm, trying to get me running. But it was as if my head was stuffed with wool, as if I had been looking into the bloody sun for too long. Panting like a mutt, I tried to move. I dragged my hand over the wall and left an ugly smear of blood behind.  
  
"We can't get caught like this, Will! Come on!"  
  
The footsteps grew louder, echoing against the cold stones. The men were close behind us. Perhaps they had found us, and they were already in the back of the alley. I tried a few steps, tried to make my legs to run. I saw that my shoes left red prints behind on the stone pebbles.  
  
"Will, come on!! Please! Come on!"  
  
"We can't get caught! Not like this!"  
  
"They'll hang us, Will. They'll hang us for this!"  
  
"Will, they're coming!"  
  
I blinked, feverishly. Salty drops of sweat stung in my eyes. My lungs were still full of sharp broken pieces. I ran so fast that it felt like my feet only touched the ground with every third or fourth stride, and my mouth tasted of hot metal. I was still running. Pete and I, we were still trying to get away from our persecutors. There was no blood, no knife in my hand. It had all just been in my mind.  
  
We slipped into another alleyway, went halfway through, then took another turn, crossed that one right to the end to gain some distance on our pursuers, then turned right and then immediately left. We were scuttling like rats inside a stinking maze. But it was our maze, our labyrinth of narrow passages and crooked corridors; the rat's territories. We knew what we doing, unlike Walrus face and his righteous company. Finally, Pete and I reached the point that we couldn't run any longer. We stumbled to a stop, looking over our shoulders anxiously while we wheezed like overheated steam engines. We only saw the empty alley stretching out behind us, with it's heaps of garbage piled up in the corners and a starving mutt lying in a doorway, breathing like a bag of heaving bones. A beam of light cut a sharp rectangle shape out of the dark shadows on the ground. It looked just like somebody had dropped a big white coffin right out of the sky.  
  
"Think we lost them." I wheezed. I wanted to lean my back against the wall for a rest but stepped on something slippery hidden away underneath the garbage, and my feet almost went out from under me. I cursed, and kicked the slimy heap, slivers of rotting greens and black mouldy peels went into the air. There was a loud chiming of a bottle rolling over the cobbles. Then I smelled it, rising up from the spoiled yellowy liquid trickling out of a broken flask and overpowering the general stench; the strong sour smell of vinegar.  
  
I leaned forward, my hands resting on knees, staring down at own shadow thrown over the ground, my heart still pounding like it could dislodge itself out of my soddin chest. I thought of what that woman had said to me after I bumped into her and had caught an unintended look into her future. She had said that she was sorry for me, and for the boy. And she had looked at me with that shocked expression in her chestnut eyes, like she had seen something. Just like I did with her. As if she knew.  
  
"Will -"  
  
I heard a loud scream, sharp like the cutting edge of paper. Walrus face had suddenly appeared out of soddin nowhere and had grabbed Pete by his arm. The boy was shouting, pulling away and hitting him wildly with his one free hand turned into a fist. But it was just like David against soddin Goliath, or an eight-year old schoolboy against the headmaster. Walrus face twisted the lad's hand at his back and then used his whole bulky weight to throw him against the wall, pinning him down. He snatched a pair of handcuffs out of his pockets and he secured one end around the lad's wrist while the boy was screaming and struggling underneath him.  
  
"Get off him!" I yelled.  
  
I ran back and gobbed the old copper, my fist cracking bones underneath the leathery skin of his jaw. I swung back my arm to throw another one at him, but he dodged it, and managed to kick me in the side. The impact made me plunge backwards into the garbage. I would have been all right if it wasn't that I landed real badly. When I smacked down between the stinking fish heads and chewed on meat bones, a hot fierce stitch of pain shot into my body. Something sharp and bloody pointy, a broken bottle or a piece of wood I figured, had pierced right through my side like a toothpick sticking into a slice of sausage. Walrus face came up to me. Somewhere from beneath the folds of his coat, he conjured a wooden club. He raised it up high and brought it down violently, flat on my chest. I grunted, the impact knocking all the air out of lungs. His face was a distorted red blur, his moustache a sticky, shivering black crow sitting on his upper lip. It drooped to one side, as if it had a wounded wing, and underneath, that corner of his mouth sagged down and drooled dark red strings of slobber. He shouted. It sounded like he had a belly full of air and only a narrow flute of a throat and each word that managed to escape from his lips were stretched out endlessly.  
  
"Yeee dirteee dog! Yeee dirteee bastard! Yeee busted meeey bloodeeey jaw!!"  
  
I saw how he raised the wooden club up again.  
  
"I'll teeeach yeee to hit an officee!"  
  
He was aiming at my skull. I turned away, arms draped over my head in a moronic attempt to raise some sort of a shield.  
  
"I'll teeeach yeee to mess with meeee! I bloodeeeeey kill Yeeeee! Bloodeeeeey eeeeeeee EEEEEEEE!!!"  
  
A high pitch screech, loud and God-bloody-awful, cutting into my bones like fingernails scraping over a black board. I opened my eyes and saw that Walrus face still stood there with the club raised above the shoulders, swaying on his feet like a giant oak that had been chopped at the base and was about to fall. I scuttled away from underneath, thought he was going to crash into me. Walrus face rocked slowly, his eyes wide as if in shock, but his lips grinning this real moronic grin. Even the busted right side of his mouth was joining in. It looked pained and crazed, and I saw that his teeth were clenched together when his lips peeled away. Then I saw the blood. It gushed out of the side of his neck, spraying a bloody rainbow into the air like a busted drainpipe on high pressure. Walrus face dropped the club. A hand moved up and touched the piece of metal that stuck out of his neck. My eyes caught the sparkling of a blade, and the red, the fierce crimson of fresh aortic blood dripping down the cutting edge and the rust-brown handle. His fingers wrapped around it, and for a moment I thought he might try to pull it out. But then his mouth opened and he produced a slow, gurgling sound. His eyes rolled up to whites and he slumped forward, his massive body limp and heavy as a bag of coal, and clashed into the ground, burying his face into a pile of raunchy vegetables.  
  
It was only after while that I realized that someone else still stood there in front of me. Pete's complexion had turned so white that even the brown- orange freckles on his cheeks looked pale. His hands were shivering like they don't belong to him but to someone bloody ancient. I stared at Pete and I gazed at the dead bloke with his face down in the garbage and his great big moustache dipping in the mash and greens, and up to Pete again, and finally, my slow working brains picked up the clues and was able to put one and the other together. At the side of the dead Walrus's neck where the blood kept gushing out the wound like a soddin spring, I recognized the knife. I remembered giving it to the boy two months ago at his birthday. A real Swiss army chopper. I told him, smirking like an idiot, being oh so bloody content about myself, so proud to impress the lad. And I had taught him, didn't I? I bloody taught him myself exactly what you could do with it. Stick it into a place where the main arteries flow, I told him. Stick it where the most damage could be done with the least of effort. The soft tissues just underneath the ribcage where you would puncture the liver, or the soft spot just above the collarbone where the neck branched off the shoulders. Stab the knife in there and give it a little twist, so the wounds would fully open like a mouth. That would make the blood spill. It would make the blood run like a bloody river.  
  
A stream of crimson ran between the cobbles, a red creek traveling through a bedding of stones, creating a web with in the middle the dead bloke lying there like a big fat ugly spider. The edge of the blood puddle reached my shoes. I scrambled back up, hardly aware of the horrified scream that still managed to escape my choked up throat.  
  
"God - Oh God." Pete muttered. "Oh God Oh God Oh God." Then, with the sort of daft naivety that could only come from a total shutdown of the boy's noggins, he asked frightfully. "Is - is he dead, Will?"  
  
"What do you think?!" I muttered. "Honestly Pete, what do you bloody well THINK?!"  
  
Pete swallowed. His eyes turned all glossy. I walked over to the dead bloke, my feet heavy. I hunched down beside the body. Maybe he wasn't dead yet, I heard myself thinking, my own rationality going down the exact way Pete's was going, which was down the soddin drain. Maybe, I told myself, there was still a heartbeat. Maybe he was still breathing. I looked down at his chest but there wasn't the slightest bit of movement. Maybe he was only breathing really superficially, I kept trying to convince myself, and I carefully put a hand on his neck, at the side where there wasn't a three inch Swiss army knife sticking out, and checked for his pulse.  
  
I couldn't find any.  
  
Of course I couldn't. The man had at least lost two gallons of blood by now.  
  
I really started to hate myself for being so incredibly puddin brained to waste time on trying to find some miraculous signal of life on a bloody corpse.  
  
"What are we going to do now, Will? They're gonna hang us! He's dead Will! He's dead! What are we going to do?"  
  
Pete was rambling, his voice teary and small. It had a bloody whiny drone to it. It was irritating as hell and I wanted to grab the little twat and smack him to make him shut the bloody hell up.  
  
- It's all his fault! - Said an ugly voice inside my head. - He stabbed the soddin copper, bloody murdered him! Well, you better get going, Will! You better get the hell out of here before they catch you with the little brat. The little shit is right about one thing. They're going to scream for blood for this one. That's not just a worthless old hag the little bugger bled dry. That's bloody a copper! Whoever gets caught for the act is going to swing like a dead nest of crows! Better skedaddle right out of here and let the boy take all the blame. It wouldn't be even so far from the truth. He did stab the chopper into ugly Walrus face's neck, didn't he?  
  
He did kill him.  
  
But I couldn't, however the large cowardice part of me was itching to leave Pete behind, let him take all the blame, I couldn't give in to it. That knife, I gave the boy that bloody thing! If it wasn't for me, the only thing he could stab the angry copper with was his blunt little fingers. And who gave him the advice, the encouragement to keep the knife with him and use it? If Pete wasn't trying to stop the copper from fracturing my skull, he wouldn't have done anything. He wouldn't have killed him. A good part of this bloody mess was my fault, my wrong doing, and I had to fix this, however impossible that was.  
  
I had to do something fast because we were running out of time.  
  
I grab hold of the Swiss army knife and tried to pry it out of the dead bloke's neck.  
  
"What are you doing?" Pete asked, watching quite horrified.  
  
"The handle, it has that signed emblem of the bloody blacksmith from which I bought the bloody thing! It would be real easy for the coppers to run that down. We have to get rid of it!"  
  
The blade came out. Blood welled up in a sudden gush and splashed all over my hands. The thick and coppery smell of it caught in my nose, filled my mouth and lungs. It made my head swirl and my stomach turn. I gasped for air, my gullet objecting heavily, so I sprung at my feet and staggered over to the wall, leaning on to it as I tried to catch my breath. Inhaling deeply, the sickly sweet smell of murder was quickly replaced by the sour smell of vinegar, and I remembered that I had broken a whole bottle of the soddin stuff when we first crashed into this alley. The smell also brought back another memory, something that I had forgotten for a moment but was now quickly returning to me like a frightening whisper in the night.  
  
My temples pounded like a mad drum. I faced a damp brick wall, my hands held up at eyelevel with their palms out against the rough surface. Pete was shouting me, and I turned around to face him. The boy opened and closed his mouth frantically, his eyes wide with panic. His words were all distorted, his message completely lost. I was too frightened, too paralysed by what was happening now to be able to listen to him. I knew this was going to happen. I had seen it, - experienced - it. Just minutes before we crashed into this alley.  
  
God, what was going on here?  
  
I turned to the brick wall again and looked at the back of my hand, saw the blood that was splashed onto it by my attempt to retrieve the murder weapon, and it was as if I was only seeing it for the first time and again for the trillionth of time. I looked down at my other hand. I raised it up and looked at the knife with the same curiosity and the same feeling of fearful recognition. Two colours it had. Part crimson, part glistering metal.  
  
So that's what happened. I thought to myself, and swallowed sickly. That's why I ended up with the knife and the blood on my hands. A cold and heavy thing sunk into me when the fragmented pieces of knowledge finally fell into place like some gruesome sort of puzzle.  
  
Blood ran down the blade, sticky red drips caught in the well at the base. One stubborn drop flooded from the pocket, and dripped down the handle, dripped onto the fold of skin between my thumb and finger.  
  
I screamed and I tossed the bloody thing on the ground. Footsteps and voices, I heard them coming; the men who were looking for a couple of little pickpockets and who would find the dead police officer and his two murders instead. Pete was still shouting. I turned around. The blood stuck to my hand like sinful glue.  
  
"Will! Please! We have to run! They're coming! They're coming for us!"  
  
Pete grabbed me and tugged on my arm. I dragged my hand over the wall as I pushed myself forward. My blood tainted hand made an ugly smear across the bricks, a blood red bird that was all feathers and no wings.  
  
"We can't get caught like this, Will! Come on!" Pete pleaded.  
  
The footsteps grew louder now. My shoes left red prints behind on the grey stone of the pebbles. I tried to run but it felt like I was wading through a wall of heavy mud. Pete kept yelling. Kept telling me the exact same things he had told me just minutes or eons before.  
  
"Will, come on!! Please! Come on!"  
  
Maybe this was all just a dream, I thought to myself.  
  
"We can't get caught! Not like this!"  
  
Maybe I would snap out of it any time now to find myself back in the alleyway, running like we were doing now, only the dead Walrus bloke would be still alive then, and Pete and I wouldn't have killed anyone.  
  
"They'll hang us, Will. They'll hang us for this!" The boy cried.  
  
Will, they're coming.  
  
TBC 


	13. Falling Forever part 5

5.  
  
The dream was terrible. It caught me in its stinking threads, wrapped my mind in tight sheets of nightmare visions, rendering it immobile and powerless. I tried to fight it, to shake off those frightening images, because I knew that I dreaming. I knew I was trapped inside a nightmare of my own making. I kept telling myself that I should wake up, stop dreaming, pull myself out of there. My consciousness surfaced, only with much effort. Light started to shimmer through into the fog of my dream, and my eyes caught the hazy shapes from my surroundings. I was so close, but yet at the same time, so incapable of saving myself. The nightmare pulled me back, sticky spidery webs closed around my ankles, my wrists, my waist, dragging me under. I wanted to scream out loud for help, but all that came from me was only a soft sleep-drunken mutter. Then someone yelled my name, called out to me. I began to fight my way back to the surface. The spell of my nightmare fell off like broken chains. Dim light reappeared. My name was called again by a familiar voice that grew louder and louder. The thin, translucent membrane that kept me prisoner inside that dark dream broke open and I opened my eyes, my mouth finally able to release the horrified cry that was still buried inside.  
  
"Will! Will! Wake up! You must wake up!"  
  
My mouth hung open and my tongue felt dry like parchment. I had the terrible urge to swallow, but when I tried to close my mouth, a stab of ferocious pain flashed up my skull. I groaned.  
  
"Will? Are you awake?"  
  
"Pete?" I muttered, and immediately regretted saying it. The right side of my jaw felt like it had been smashed to bits.  
  
"Are you all right?" The boy's voice shivered slightly. It came from out of the shadows at my left. I had no soddin clue where I was. There was too little light. I tried to sit up, and something rattled. When I looked I saw rusty chains slivering over each other like a nest of entangled serpents between my legs.  
  
"You were having nightmares again. I thought I wouldn't be able to wake you up from here." He explained in a small voice.  
  
My head ached. I pulled up my knees up against my belly and got reminded by the small pangs of pain, shooting out of every muscle from all over my body, that I had recently been beaten the crap out of me. When I tried to turn myself a little to the left a hot burning stitch shot right up my spine and made me clench my teeth together. The second explosion of ripe agony in my jaw made my eyes bloody water, so I threw out a lisping curse, making it even worse.  
  
"Will? Is something wrong?" I heard chains rattle, somewhere in the darkness where Pete's voice came from.  
  
"Are you hurt?"  
  
I swallowed despite of the pain. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the dim light, and I started to be able to make up my murky surroundings. I was in a small rectangular cell, boxed in by coarse stone walls, sitting on a dirt floor covered by damp straw. There was a metal door at my left with a small barred porthole in the middle, but no light shone through. There was however, a narrow slot high up against the ceiling of the wall at my right where a ghostly pale beam of daylight entered. The rattling chain-serpents were secured around my wrists and ankles had had their tails anchored firmly to the wall behind me.  
  
I was in prison.  
  
"Will? Please, say something. I'm scared."  
  
"I'm all right." I said, clenching my jaw, trying to figure out a way to speak without moving it too much.  
  
"Busted jaw. Hurts to talk."  
  
A silence followed. Pete must be held inside another cell, not too far away from mine. I wondered if the bloody pigs had hurt the boy. I moved toward the wall, it caused my chains to jingle in a sadistically cheerful way.  
  
"You saved me from another nightmare." I said, grimacing as I did accidentally move the busted hinges. But I had to say something to the boy to reassure him.  
  
"I owe you one, Pete."  
  
Silence again. A long one that made me nervous. What if the bloody bastards had messed the boy up real bad? Broken a couple of ribs that were now slicing up his lungs? What if he was suffering of internal bleeding? Maybe Pete had passed out because of his injuries and was now slowly bleeding to death on the floor inside a cell just across the hall.  
  
"Pete?" I tried. But still there came no response.  
  
"Pete! Say something, dammit!"  
  
"Will. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." His voice was small, brittle with tears. It reminded me of how young he still was. He had always wanted us to treat him like a proper grown up, that I had forgotten that he was still no more than a child.  
  
"It's all my fault. I shouldn't have stabbed him. I shouldn't have used that knife! Now you're in prison and you're all beaten up because of me."  
  
"It's not your fault."  
  
"I killed him Will! I bloody butchered him!"  
  
A muffled sob, followed by a loud sniff.  
  
"I didn't want to kill him. Honest to God! But I was so scared! I was so afraid he would hurt you."  
  
A pang of guilt stabbed my heart.  
  
"What are they going to do to us, Will?"  
  
I pressed my back against the wall. The cold and the dampness of the stone bricks were quickly passed through my thin shirt, sending a shiver up my spine. I covered my face and rubbed in my eyes as shreds of the nightmare came rushing back. The last words of the doomed girl in the gallery spooked inside my mind's ears, forbidding whispers in the dark.  
  
"Are they going to hang us? Are they going to kill us now?"  
  
The memory of a room, not this one, but one much like it, with the same chipped metal door and barred windows. Two men were yelling to each other. One held a gun in his hand, pointed down at me. There was a puddle of blood on the floor. Then I heard a scream, followed by he blast of a gunshot.  
  
"Will? Please. Tell me the truth! Tell me what they're going to do to us."  
  
I opened my eyes, taking my breath like a convict in front of the gallows who knew that it would be his last. There was a lump in my throat and I had to swallow hard before I could lie to the boy.  
  
"It's all right, Pete."  
  
"I promise that we will be all right."  
  
TBC 


	14. Falling Forever part 6

6.  
  
On that last day I was roughly awakened by one of the guards just minutes after the first measly beam of light started shimmering into my cell. The officer on duty was a middle-aged bloke with a face so plain that I couldn't remember from seeing him before. He freed me from my manacles, only to replace them with a set of hand and feet cuffs with very short links so that after he had yanked me up and forced me to follow him I sort of had to hobble along behind the bloody wanker. When we passed by Pete's cell I heard the boy calling out from behind the rusty metal door.  
  
"Will! Don't tell them! Please! Don't! Don't tell them!"  
  
"Don't worry! I'm not going to tell them anything! You have my word!"  
  
"Shut the bloody hell up!" The guard shouted. He banged on the metal with his wooden club, and then he smacked the soddin thing flat on my injured left side.  
  
"And you, keep your head straight! Keep on walking!"  
  
When the heavy steel doors closed behind us, I could still hear Pete's fearful cries echo down the deserted hallway.  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The room was just like how I remembered it from my dream. A grim and eerie space, a rectangular box with gray walls that once must have been white, a large crack running across the floor like the ground had been split by an earthquake, and two small barred windows; one looked out at a blind wall of red bricks, the other provided only the tiniest glimpse of the world outside. It was grimy, musty and old. It was like a soddin tomb with a very mediocre view. Alarming stains of various colours spread like dried up fountains all on the floor, and I wondered worryingly if it was blood or other types of bodily fluids that a bloke was not supposed to lose in too large quantities. There were three crumbly bricks lying against the foot of the metal door, keeping it open. The guard picked them up. The door slammed shut with a heavy bang as he carried the bricks to middle of the room where he carefully placed them on top of each other, right on the spot of a very disturbing looking, dark brown stain.  
  
"Step up that pile." He commanded.  
  
Warily, I climbed up the shaky structure. With my hands tied behind my back and my feet cuffed together by a five-inch long chain, it was rather difficult to stay in balance. The guard gave me a push and I tipped myself over, almost chipping my teeth on the concrete floor.  
  
"What are you doing?" The bastard laughed. "Can't you even stand up on a couple of bricks? We didn't hurt you that much, did we now, you little Nancy?"  
  
He smacked me again with his club on my legs, causing my knees to buckle.  
  
"Now step back right on it! Move!"  
  
I stepped back on the pile of bricks and tried to keep balanced this time. The structure swayed dangerously as I stood there shaking on my legs. The guard circled me, dirt crunching underneath his soles as he stepped around calmly. I tried not to look at him or follow the tiny movements of his hand holding on the slap-happy wooden stick. I sucked in a deep breath, kept my eyes on the small window that looked out at the open sky. I thought of the day that Pete had found me in the back alley behind the St. Giles. The sky had the color of bleached linen that morning and snow fell down in a soundless storm, covering a gray and joyless world under a blanket of pure bright white. Everything had been so quiet, so peaceful. I wished I could hang on to that memory, carry it on me like a shield for all the bloody horrible things to come.  
  
Something cold and coarse, heavy like an anvil, was hung around my neck. The guard pulled a chain that hung next to me, and suddenly, the links around my throat tightened, and I felt the heavy drag of the nose on the rest of my body. Panicking now, I stretched myself as tall as I could and balanced on the tips of my toes. The pile of bricks under my feet wobbled treacherously.  
  
"Now be careful. Don't go hang yourself." The guard said, bloody amused.  
  
"Seriously, a bloke before you just fell off and strangled himself when I was taking a leak. Made a big mess in here."  
  
He struck me in the back, and laughed when he saw how I almost lost my balance again and had to hop on my feet to get the pile of bricks from tumbling over. In my panic, I kicked off the one lying on top, and suddenly I was dangling from the ceiling, the nose closing around my throat where it squeezed shut my air pipe till it felt like it was reduced into the miniature size of a bloody straw.  
  
"What did I tell ya? Stop fooling around!" The bastard mocked, and he kept laughing when he bended over to pick up the brick and placed it back on the pile. I searched frantically with my feet and found the support that I so desperately needed. Eagerly, I took in gasps of air and filled my lungs till they felt like bloody balloons.  
  
The guard watched me struggle with a wide monkey grin on his leathery gumboot face.  
  
"Easy lad. Easy. Don't waste all your breathe on this little accident. There's a lot more to come." He rattled with the chain and looked meaningfully up to the ceiling.  
  
Somehow, between the choking and the dry retching, I managed to say something worthwhile.  
  
"Get bend, arsewipe."  
  
The wanker stepped up, his face so close that I could admire his yellowing teeth and enjoy his revolting cigarette/sewage breath. He was no longer smiling.  
  
"You want to die now? Is that it?"  
  
The guard grabbed me by my hair, pulled at it to make me look him into the eyes.  
  
"You and your no-good friend killed somebody. Do you realize that? You two petty minded monsters have coldheartedly butchered a well-respected gentleman. A good, law-abiding citizen. Someone whose life is worth a hundred times more than your miserable existence!"  
  
He cleared his throat and then spat a huge globule of spit into my face.  
  
"Do remember this next time we make it a little too comfy for you in here and you start wishing that you were dead"  
  
His mouth stretched into a gleeful grin.  
  
"This is only the beginning, boy. The way I see it, you have to suffer all this and still have the eternal fires of hell waiting for you. So I wouldn't rush things if I were you."  
  
The guard let go, and strolled off to a dark corner of the room. He took a chair, turned it around and sat on it with the back turned to his chest and his legs spread on each side like he was riding a horse. He lit a fag, rested his hands on the back of the chair as he blew out thin rings of smoke.  
  
Time crawled by the way it only could when you were in agony or in deadly fear, or, both. Minutes stretched into years, decades, bloody centuries. The effort to keep myself standing up was starting to strain on me. Muscles and bones protested, nagged loudly, then screamed desperately for me to stop bloody hell abusing them. My feet felt mangled, like the tendons were slowly being pulled apart and were close to snapping.  
  
I closed my eyes, forced myself to keep my mind off the pain. I tried to think of the gray sky and the snow. That wonderful, soothing snow that could ease all the hellish fires raging inside my broken body. That one cold day in winter, beautiful and kind that could leave me unfeeling and non-existing, a day that could bring an end to all my suffering and grant me my peace.  
  
I forced that comforting image into a small, hard ball. Buried it, deep inside of me. It was not much for a shield against these horrific tortures I was being put through, but it was like a lump of ice, pushed against open sores. It helped. Just a bit. Just enough to keep me from kicking down the pile of bricks beneath my feet and take a leap into the air. But then I realized that I was only trying to fool myself. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to strangle myself to escape the cruel ingenuity of my torturers. Even if I knew what was going to happen to me, how it was going to end. For now, I was still breathing. I was still alive.  
  
I still had a smitten of hope.  
  
A scream, loud and dreadful, coming from outside the corridor, and my eyes flew open fearfully. The guard turned his head to the noise, smoking his fourth fag already with the same sittin-in-the-pub-and-havin-a-pint attitude. He caught me looking at the door, and he grinned, baring his yellow teeth.  
  
"Your friend." He said, and nodded his chin into the direction from where the cries came from. "A very squeamish little fellow. They hardly started working on him yet."  
  
"What are they doing to him?" My voice had not even the strength of a rodent's squeak. Outside the small cosmos of the room, the terrible, heart breaking cries just beamed through the inches thick prison walls like the death throws of a dying star.  
  
"Whatever they have to do to make him talk, I guess. Or make you talk." He tapped the ash from his fag onto the floor, and grinded the ash into one of those questionable stains. "As long as you two keep your gobs shut we can't do anything really, so we have to try to be a bit more persuasive."  
  
"You sick bastards!" I yelled. "You monsters!"  
  
The guard shrugged and gazed back at me with the bloody innocent expression of a praying mantis.  
  
Another cry cut through the icy silence.  
  
"You have to stop this." I begged. "You're going to kill him. He's just a kid."  
  
The guard just looked back at me with much disinterest.  
  
"Look, the boy is innocent! It's not his fault! He didn't kill anyone!"  
  
"If that's true." He paused, lifted his fag from his lips, then breathed out clouds of smoke out of his nostrils. "Why don't you confess then?"  
  
The only thing I could do was gaze back at him, my tongue lying like dead chunk of meat on the bottom of my mouth. Outside, Pete's screams of agony and pleads for mercy blended into one long and piteous cry that burned into my conscience.  
  
The guard grinned.  
  
"Not exactly jumping onto the opportunity, are we?"  
  
His screams lasted for over an hour, but to me, they seemed to sound for an eternity. Finally, they ebbed away and turned into quiet sobbing and soft exhausted pleads. Then, there was silence. I closed my eyes again, wondering if they had killed him or that he had just passed out because of his injuries. It would be better if they had killed him, I thought bitterly, but in my heart I knew that they hadn't.  
  
By the time the sadistic bastard had just stumped out his fourteenth fag on the floor, and was busy lighting up his new one, the door of the tomb-like room opened and another officer stepped in. Someone of a higher rank then the chain-smoker with the - I don't give a bloody shag- mind-set, judging from the younger bloke's uniform. He also wasn't just another copper with a plain and forgettable face. Actually, he did look familiar to me, and somewhere, from the back of my mind, I recalled seeing him before.  
  
In the alley, where Pete and I were caught. Walrus face. The man that Pete killed. He somehow looked like him. He was younger, fitter and much less corpulent, less covered in sea-mammal blubber so to speak. He didn't have a large trembling bird sitting on his upper lip and his cheeks were not flaps of heavy skin land-sliding down his chin, but there was something about him. There was something that compelled me to make that connection.  
  
The guard sprang on his feet and tipped his hat to salute the young officer. The new bloke just nodded solemnly, then came at me with his clean- shaven face as deadpan as an Egyptian death mask. He held something in his hand, but it was half hidden in the shadows of his coat. I couldn't exactly see what it was.  
  
"Did he confess?" The officer asked.  
  
I caught the guard glaring at him. When the older copper answered, he seemed to be a bit nervous.  
  
"No, sir."  
  
The young officer stepped closer to me. His face still expressionless, his eyes stale and cold.  
  
"Well, that's not unexpected, is it?"  
  
Suddenly I realized what it was that made me recognize him. His eyes. Dark, moody, and bloody scrutinizing. The bloke had his old man's eyes.  
  
"I guess we won't get an honest word out of this lowly scumbag without being persuasive, without lending him a hand."  
  
Dark liquid dripped on the floor, adding another fresh stain to the countless old ones. The bloke lifted the object that he had brought with him up against my tattered shirt, and I felt the cold sting of the tip of a blade on my flesh.  
  
"Your nasty little friend didn't want to tell us anything. He was wasting my time." He said calmly, while slowly forcing the blade into me and watching me scream.  
  
"But maybe you can be persuaded to cooperate."  
  
He lifted the blade. Raised it high enough just for me to get a good look at it.  
  
"Recognize this, killer?" he asked.  
  
The Swiss army knife. The one I had given to Pete for his birthday. The knife the boy had used to kill this man's father.  
  
The murder weapon that I had pried out of his dead daddy's neck.  
  
The young officer smiled at me, a bitter and joyless smile. I could see the hate shimmering underneath his calm appearance. The grief that was consuming him and his need for revenge.  
  
His smile wore thin, and then vanished.  
  
"Ironic, isn't? This is same knife that you used on your victim."  
  
He drove the knife into my chest, drawing a long awful cut that was not deep enough to take my life, but enough to make me clinch in agony.  
  
"You should know how it feels like, you murderer!"  
  
He cut me repeatedly with Long, hateful gashes. Blood welt up, the lines in an angry child's drawings, it drenched my shirt into a deep wine crimson.  
  
"Tell me you killed him!"  
  
"Come on you bastard! Confess to your crime!"  
  
"Tell me!"  
  
"What were your motives? Hey?"  
  
" Why did you have to kill him?!"  
  
"Why?!"  
  
"Bloody hell, why!!"  
  
He kicked the pile away from underneath my feet, and once again, I was in floating in the air. The burning pain of the numerous wounds on my chest was cut short by the balmy sensation of being strangled to death.  
  
"Why did you kill my father you useless, son of bitch! Why did you kill him!?"  
  
Bright colors explode before my eyes, while the world around me slowly dissolved into growing patches of darkness.  
  
"Sir! Get a hold on yourself!"  
  
The guard grabbed me by my legs and picked me up. The nose's deadly grip loosened around my neck and I was able to take in a lungful of air. The blood raced back up with enough oxygen to made my head tingle, my vision blurred back into normal.  
  
I knew it.  
  
I knew Walrus face was his dad even before he told me. I knew it because I had dreamed it how it was going to happen, exactly like this, just the night before.  
  
The grieving son waved the knife dangerously at me. His eyes stung with tears.  
  
"He would have retired today! Did you know that? You heartless bastard! He was going to receive his batch of honor. The job at the National would have been his last! Why did you have to kill him?!!"  
  
I couldn't have answered him, even if I had known what to say. The guard was getting tired and the nose started to strain on my neck again, leaving me half breathing, half suffocating.  
  
"Sir! He's getting strangled! Loosen the bloody chains!"  
  
His young superior just looked at him as if he was condemning that man for trying to help me. His dark brown eyes blazed with pure hatred and indignation.  
  
"If you don't, it would be murder, sir!"  
  
That snapped the wanker out his bloodthirsty haze for moment, and he unlocked the chain that had been fastened to a bolt in the wall. The pressure on my neck vanished, the links rattled down noisily and I fell as the guard let go and dropped me on the floor.  
  
"Right." Snapped the officer, his nostrils flaring like something nasty was trying to push its way trough.  
  
He marched away, swung open the prison door and barked his orders out into the hallway.  
  
"Bring in the other one! NOW!"  
  
Pete was unconscious and was half dragged, half pushed into the cell by another guard. They had hurt him badly; his right eye was beaten shut. His lower lip was red and swollen. There were cuts, shallow ones all over his chest, his arms, and his legs. The copper threw him unceremoniously on the floor, and was then ordered to leave and to shut the door behind him.  
  
The young officer stared down at me and stepped on the back of the boy's head, pushing his face to the ground with his black leather boot, causing his victim let go a small frightened whimper.  
  
"Still not keen on telling the truth?" He asked. He bowed down and pressed the blood-drenched knife on the back of Pete's neck, the sharp blade gleamed murderously against the pale flesh.  
  
"Not even when you're endangering the life of your friend?"  
  
I stayed motionless, my body frozen, heart drumming in my throat. My eyes could not stop staring at the blade, could not turn away as it was pushed deeper and deeper into the skin.  
  
"Last chance. Save the boy, William. Confess. Admit you've done it." He said.  
  
I swallowed, wanted to help. I really did. I really wanted to save my friend. All it would take was just a couple a words, my confession to this crime. Tell them I did murder the copper and give this son of a bitch the opportunity to retaliate for his old man.  
  
But I couldn't.  
  
I couldn't because for one cowardice and insane moment, all I wanted was to cling onto life just a bit longer.  
  
The revengeful wanker snorted, and then, without looking down at his victim, without even a change of expression but the one of utter disgust and hatred that was already chiseled on his face, he pushed the knife through. There was a terrifying sound of splitting bone and the horrible, fierce scream coming from the boy. The guard, who still must have been too awestruck from his boss trying to strangle me to react, snapped out of shock mode and rushed over, doing a great deal of mad screaming himself.  
  
"No, sir! Stop this! Stop it!"  
  
But the crazed out officer just pushed the guard away violently. Blood splashed up like a fountain when the blade hit the arteries, and splattered all over the young officer's face.  
  
Pete's cries passed on into something that sounded like water gurgling down the drain. Then it died down completely, leaving only silence.  
  
Blood collected underneath the body, it spread like a black pool, swallowing up all the dark stains in the concrete floor. I cried out hoarsely when it reached me and soaked the ripped rags of my shirt. I crawled up, turned my eyes away from Pete and stared down at my toes that were dipping in a puddle of my friend's blood.  
  
"Good Lord, sir! What have the bloody hell have you done!"  
  
The guard's face was paler than that of a ghost. Shaking his head, he removed his service hat. The young officer stood next to Pete's corpse with a crazed and distant look in his eyes. He looked down, probably hardly registering what he had done. He pried the knife out of Pete's neck, and wiped the blood from his hand clean over the side of his trousers. The older guard watched this with a horrified expression as the young copper caught his eyes.  
  
"Don't panic." He said in a monotonous voice. "It will wash out."  
  
"Sir. Don't you realize the gravity of the situation? You killed the suspect!"  
  
"I killed a murderer or at least an accomplice."  
  
"This is murder sir! Cold blooded murder!"  
  
"They killed my father!!" The young man yelled, his white-rimmed eyes were bulging and bloodshot.  
  
The guard backed up a few paces.  
  
"I didn't do anything wrong! They are just beasty criminals! They are a pestilence for the good people of London! They don't deserve anything better!"  
  
"Sir." The guard swallowed and stretched out his hand to him. "Give me the knife."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I don't want you to hurt the other prisoner."  
  
A faint smile crept up the officer's face. "What are you doing, Grimsby? I though that you were my father's friend?"  
  
"Yes I am. But even you're father wouldn't allow -"  
  
"You promised that you would help me to bring these two to the gallows!"  
  
"Yes, I did." The older man nodded, slowly. "I did agree to help you to make them confess but I didn't agree on bloody murder!" he moved his hand, palm open, gesturing gently. "Now listen to me son. Listen. Hand me over that knife. You're already in knee-deep shit as it is. Give me that knife, and I promise you that I would do anything in my power to help you."  
  
The young officer observed him with a faraway look in his eyes.  
  
"You're not going to turn me in, are you Grimsby?"  
  
The guard hesitated, but then reluctantly shook his head.  
  
"No sir. If you give me that knife, I won't. The coroner on duty, he is a friend of your dad's. He is used to dealing with incidents like these. I can ask him to forge the prisoner's death certificate. And I will testify for you. Tell them that it was an accident."  
  
The officer smiled grimly. "What sort of accident?"  
  
"Fell off the stairs, broke his neck." The guard shrugged, blinking perspiration out of his eyes. "That sort of crap. Whatever I can make up in time."  
  
I giggled like an idiot. My throat hurt badly and my mouth tasted of blood. When I noticed that I had caught the coppers attention, I quickly pressed a hand on my mouth and bit in it, hard.  
  
The officer stared down at me for a moment. Then when he got me real nervous and I started rocking back and forth, he suddenly stepped up and shouted into my face, causing me to cry out in fear.  
  
"This one's brain is toast." He said, gleefully. "Must be a shock to see your mate's neck just snap like a twig, isn't it?"  
  
I looked back at him and tried to hold back my tears, but for some daft reason, my eyes kept leaking.  
  
"Please sir." The guard pleaded. "This isn't worth it. This isn't worth the rest of your life!"  
  
"Poor man. We were too harsh on you." The officer persisted deliriously, turning a deaf ear on his senior colleague. "Bloody interrogations, all that good copper/bad copper business did some bad tricks on your mind."  
  
He turned to Grimsby.  
  
"Give me the key for his handcuffs."  
  
"What? Sir, what are you trying -"  
  
"Just hand them over, Grimsby. I promise I won't hurt him. You give me the keys, I hand you over the knife."  
  
Grimby hesitated, but did as he was told. The officer removed the restrains from my feet and hands while I kept myself small, rocking back and forth and stared warily at him. He got up, and rumbled with his free hand under his coat at the height of his belt, reaching for something.  
  
"Sir. You promised to hand over the knife." Grimsby tried.  
  
A small pistol appeared from underneath the young man's coat. He pressed it against my temple, just above my right ear.  
  
"I think I may have a better idea, Grimsby." He cocked back the safety. I heard the click resonate in my skull. Then the cold touch of steel was lifted, and the officer walked back a few steps with his eyes and pistol still aiming at me.  
  
"I don't understand -"  
  
"It's simple. We stick to your plan. Peter Mc Derby's death is an unfortunate accident alright, but he didn't fell off the stairs."  
  
A sick grin spread over his face. He tossed the knife to where I still sat, all huddled in a puddle of Pete's blood. It landed right before my feet.  
  
"Pick it up."  
  
I looked down at the Swish knife that was covered in ink black blood, the solid bits that stuck to it looked like pieces of sliced up liver.  
  
"Pick it up I said!"  
  
I reached for it. My hand shivered uncontrollably.  
  
"What are you doing?!"  
  
"Peter Mc Derby was interrogated." He explained to the guard in a cold matter of fact voice. "Then he was locked up inside this cell together with the other subject also accused of the murder on the honorable chief constable Alexander O'Brien. They were left unguarded for a couple of minutes when a quarrel arose between these two. Officer Grimsby rushed in to see what was going on, and our William Doe here, snatched the murder weapon from the constable. In his fear that his young protégée might expose and testify against him in court, the criminal killed the young boy with a stab in the back of the neck." He grinned devilishly and wet his lips before he continued, constable Grimsby standing next to him like a tiny little angel sitting on an mad killer's shoulder, unable to stop him while he had to listen to his crazed, wacked-out plan with growing disgust.  
  
"The murderer tried to flee the scene, threatening constable Grimsby, and almost succeeded in taking him hostage. Fortunately, I became aware of the racket inside cell 12B and rushed in, just in time."  
  
Holding the knife in my hand, I gazed up at the man holding the pistol.  
  
Suddenly, I remembered the loud, shattering sound. Like thunder. But I couldn't remember if hurt or not, what I would be able to feel when it happened.  
  
"Jesus! Eric! You promised me! You promised me you wouldn't hurt him!"  
  
Eric, Eric O'Brien. That was his name. Now I was at least properly introduced to my murderer. Although I wouldn't doubt it for a second if somebody told me that I had known his name all this time, that it had only been buried underneath the forgetful sand of my mind.  
  
This was after all, a nightmare and a memory, and both of them were inescapable.  
  
My cheeks were wet. I was crying, for Pete and because I was scared, even now I knew that this was what was supposed to happen.  
  
"I'm sorry!!" I shouted, my voice broken, and inside my head, the girl from the gallery spoke to me in a sad voice.  
  
- Me to. I'm sorry for you too. And for the boy. -  
  
"Think of your own life Eric. Don't do something stupid! Think of your own father!"  
  
Eric O'brien grinned as he pulled the trigger.  
  
"I am."  
  
A sound like thunder. A scream. The little piece of rounded metal bore into me, I imagined at same the spot that O'Brien had marked out on my skull. Strangely, there was no pain. The strength just left my body, and I slumped down at my side, my blood flowing out of my nose, out of my ears and out of the wound in my head, joining and becoming one with Pete's.  
  
I slumped, slumbered, fell into darkness.  
  
TBC 


End file.
